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LIBRARY 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 

GIFT  OF 
MRS.  EDWIN  CORLE 
IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  HORACE  ARMSTRONG 


JOAM  OF  ARC 


Edition  De  Luxe 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE 
ENGLISH  PEOPLE 

By 
JOHN  RICHARD  GREEN,  M.  A. 


Volume  One 


From  449  to  1461 


ILLUSTRATED 


THE  NOTTINGHAM  SOCIETY 
New  York  Philadelphia  Chicago 


INTEODUCTIOK. 


The  story  of  how  the  History  of  the  English  People  came  tc  be 
written  would  be  the  story  of  ilr.  Green's  life,  from  the  time  wb^n  his 
boyish  interest  was  first  awakened  by  the  world  beyond  himselr  until 
his  work  was  done.  So  closely  are  the  work  and  the  worker  bound 
together  that  unless  the  biography  be  fully  written  no  real  account  of 
the  gorwth  of  the  book  can  indeed  be  given.  But  in  issuing  a  New 
Edition  of  the  History,  a  slight  sketch  of  the  historical  progress  of  the 
writer's  mind,  and  of  the  gradual  way  in  which  the  plan  of  his  work 
grew  up,  may  not  seem  out  of  place. 

John  Richard  Green,  who  was  born  at  Oxford  in  December,  1837, 
was  sent  at  eight  years  old  to  Magdalen  Grammar  School,  then  held  in 
a  small  room  within  the  precincts  of  the  College,  The  Oxford  world 
about  him  was  full  of  suggestions  of  a  past  which  very  early  startled 
his  curiosity  and  fired  his  imagination.  The  gossiping  tales  of  an  old 
dame  who  had  seen  George  the  Third  drive  through  the  town  in  a 
coach  and  six  were  his  first  lessons  in  history.  Year  after  year  he  took 
part  with  excited  fancy  in  the  procession  of  the  ]\Iagdalen  choir  boys  to 
the  College  tower  on  May  Day,  to  sing  at  the  sunrisiug  a  Hymn  to  the 
Trinity  which  had  replaced  the  ^lass  chanted  in  pre-Reformation  days, 
and  to  "jangle"  the  bells  in  recognition  of  an  immemorial  festival. 
St.  Giles'  fair,  the  "beating  of  the  bounds,"  even  the  name  of  "Penny- 
farthing  Street,"  where  no  less  records  of  a  mysterious  past  than  Chapel 
or  College  or  the  very  trees  of  Magdalen  Walk;  and  he  once  received, 
breathless  and  awe-struck,  a  prize  from  the  hands  of  the  centenarian 
President  of  the  College,  Dr.  Routh,  the  last  man  who  ever  wore  a  wig 
in  Oxford,  a  man  who  had  himself  seen  Dr.  Johnson  stand  ia  the  High 
Street  with  one  foot  on  either  side  of  the  kennel  that  ran  down  in  the 
middle  of  the  way,  the  street  boys  standing  round,  "none  daring  to 
interrupt  the  meditations  of  the  great  lexicographer."  "You  are  a 
clever  boy,"  said  the  old  man  as  he  gave  the  prize  and  shook  him  by 
the  hand. 

His  curiosity  soon  carried  him  beyond  Oxford;  and  in  very  early 
days  he  learned  to  wander  on  Saints'  days  and  holidays  to  the  churches 
of  neighboring  villages,  and  there  shut  himself  in  to  rub  brasses  and 
study  architectural  moldings.  Other  interests  followed  on  his  eccle- 
siastical training.  He  remembered  the  excitement  which  w-as  produced 
in  Oxford  by  Layard's  discovery  of  the  Nestorians  in  the  Euphrates 
valley.  One  day  Mr.  Ramsay  gathered  round  him  the  boys  who  were 
at  play  in  Magdalen  Walk  and  told  them  of  his  journey  to  see  these 
people;  and  one  at  least  of  his  hearers  plunged  eagerly  into  problems 
then  much  discussed  of  the  relations  of  orthodox  believers  to  Mono- 
physites,  and  the  distinctions  between  heresy  and  schism,  questions 
which  occupied  him  many  years.  Knowledge  of  this  kind,  be  said 
long  afterwards,  had  been  a  real  gain  to  him.  "The  study  of  what 
the  Monophysites  did  in  Syria,  and  the  Monothelites  in  Egypt,  has 
taught  me  w'hat  few  historians  know — the  intimate  part  religion  playa 


H  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 


in  !i  niition's  history,  aud    how  closely  it  joins    itself  to  a  people's 

Living  ill  a  strictly  Conservative  atmosphere,  he  had  been  very  dili- 
gently brought  up  as  a  Tory  aud  a  High  Churchman.  But  when  he 
was  about  fourteen,  orthodox-  Conservatism  and  school  life  came  to  a 
close  which  then  seemed  to  him  very  tragic.  A  school  essay  was  set  on 
Charles  the  First;  and  as  the  boy  read  earnestly  every  book  he  could 
■.ud  on  the  subject,  it  suddenly  burst  on  him  that  Charles  was  wrong. 
I  he  essay,  written  with  a  great  deal  of  feeling  tmder  this  new  and 
■ii.rong  conviction,  gained  the  prize  over  the  heads  of  boys  older  and 
\ill  tlien  reputed  abler;  but  it  drew  down  on  him  unmeasured  disap- 
onnal.  Canon  Mozley,  who  examined,  remonstrated  in  his  grave  way : 
""  Your  essay  is  very  good,  but  remember  1  do  not  agree  with  your  con- 
clusions, aud  you  will  in  all  prol)ability  see  reason  to  change  them  as 
you  grow  older."  The  head-master  took  a  yet  more  severe  view  of 
such  a  change  of  political  creed.  But  the  impulse  to  Liberalism  had 
been  definitely  given;  and  had  indeed  brought  with  it  many  other 
grave  questionings.  When  at  the  next  examination  he  shot  up  to  the 
bead  of  the  school,  his  master  advised  that  he  should  be  withih-awn 
from  ]Magdalen,  to  the  dismay  both  of  himself  and  of  the  uncle  with 
whom  he  lived.  The  uncle  indeed  had  his  own  grounds  of  alarm. 
John  had  one  day  stood  at  a  tailor's  window  in  Oxford  where  Lord 
John  Russell's  Durham  Letter  was  spread  out  to  view,  and,  as  he  read 
it,  had  come  to  his  own  conclusions  as  to  its  wisdom.  He  even  declared 
the  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Act  to  be  absurd.  His  uncle,  horrified  at  so 
extreme  a  heresy,  with  angry  decision  ordered  him  to  find  at  once 
another  home:  aud  when  after  a  time  the  agitation  had  died  away  and 
he  was  allowed  to  come  back,  it  was  on  the  condition  of  never  again 
alluding  to  so  painful  a  subject.  The  new-found  errors  clung  to  him, 
however,  when  he  went  shortly  afterwards  to  live  in  the  country  with 
a  tutor.  "I  wandered  about  the  fields  thinking,"  he  said,  "but  I 
never  went  back  from  the  opinions  I  had  begun  to  form." 

It  was  when  he  was  about  sixteen  that  Gibbon  fell  into  his  hands; 
and  from  that  moment  the  enthusiasm  of  history  took  hold  of  him. 
"Man  and  man's  history"  became  henceforth  the  dominant  interest  of 
Ids  life.  When  he  returned  to  Oxford  with  a  scholarship  to  Jesus 
College,  an  instinct  of  chivalrous  devotion  inspired  his  resolve  that  the 
stud}'  of  history  sliould  never  become  with  him  "a  matter  of  classes  or 
fellowships,"  nor  sliould  be  touched  by  the  rivalries,  the  conventional 
methods,  the  artificial  limitations,  and  the  utilitarian  aims  of  the  Schools. 
College  work  and  history  work  went  on  apart,  with  much  mental  fric- 
tion and  difficulty  of  adjustment  and  sorrow  of  heart.  Without  any 
advisers,  almost  without  friends,  he  groped  his  way,  seeking  in  very 
solitary  fashion  after  his  own  particular  vocation.  His  first  historical 
efforts  were  spent  on  that  which  lay  immediately  about  him;  and  the 
series  of  papers  which  he  sent  at  this  time  to  the  Oxford  Chronicle  on 
"  Oxford  in  the  last  Century  "  are  instinct  with  all  the  vivid  imagination 
of  his  later  work,  and  tell  their  tale  after  a  method  and  in  a  style 
which  was  already  perfectly  natural  to  him.  He  read  enormously,  but 
history  was  never  to  him  wholly  a  matter  of  books.  The  Town  was  still 
lis  teacher.  There  was  then  little  help  to  be  had  for  the  history  of  Oxford 
or  any  other  town.  "  So  wholly  had  the  story  of  the  towns,"  he  wrote 
later,  "  passed  out  of  the  minds  of  men  that  there  is  still  not  a  history 
of  our  country  which  devotes  a  single  page  to  it,  and  there  is  hardly 


INTRODUCTION.  m 


an  antiquary  Avho  Las  cared  to  disentomb  the  tragic  records  of  fights 
fought  for  Ireedoiu  in  this  narrow  theater  from  the  archives  which  still 
contain  them.  The  treatise  of  Brady  written  from  a  political,  that  of 
Madox  from  a  narrow  antiquarian,  point  of  view;  the  summaries  of 
charters  given  by  the  Commissioners  under  the  Municipal  Reform  Act; 
the  volunies  of  Stephens  and  Merewether;  and  here  and  there  a  little 
treatise  on  isolated  towns  are  the  only  printed  materials  for  the  stuciv 
of  the  subject."  Other  materials  were  abundant.  St.  Giles  Fair  was 
full  of  lessons  for  him.  He  has  left  an  amusing  account  of  how,  on  a 
solemn  day  which  came  about  once  in  eight  years,  he  marc  hed  with 
]\Iayor  and  Corporation  round  the  city  boundaries.  He  lingered  over 
the  memory  of  St.  Martin's  Church,  the  center  of  the  town  lite,  the 
folk-mote  within  its  walls,  the  low  shed  outside  where  mayor  and 
bailiff  administered  justice,  the  bell  above  which  rang  out  its  answer  to 
the  tocsin  of  the  gownsmen  in  St.  j\Iary's,  the  butchery  and  spiccry  and 
vintnery  which  clustered  round  in  the  narrow  streets.  "In  a  walk 
through  Oxford  one  may  find  illustrations  of  every  period  of  our  annals. 
The  cathedral  still  preserves  the  memory  of  the  Mercian  St.  Frideswide; 
the  tower  of  the  Korman  Earls  frowns  down  on  the  waters  of  the  Mill ; 
around  Merton  hang  the  memories  of  the  birth  of  our  Constitution;  the 
New  Learning  and  the  Reformation  mingle  in  Christ  Church ;  a  '  grind  ' 
along  the  i\Iarston  Road  follows  the  track  of  the  army  of  Fairfax;  the 
groves  of  Magdalen  preserve  the  living  traditions  of  the  last  of  the 
Stewarts." 

Two  years,  however,  of  solitary  effort  to  work  out  problems  of 
education,  of  life,  of  history,  left  him  somewhat  disheartened  and 
bankrupt  in  energy.  A  mere  accident  at  last  brought  the  first  counsel 
and  encouragement  he  had  ever  known.  Some  chance  led  him  one  day 
to  the  lecture-room  where  Stanley,  then  Canon  of  Christ  Church,  was 
speaking  on  the  history  of  Dissent.  Startled  out  of  tlie  indifference 
with  which  he  had  entered  the  room,  he  suddenly  found  himself  listening 
with  an  interest  and  wonder  which  nothing  in  Oxford  had  awakened, 
till  the  lecturercloscd  with  the  words,  "  '  Magna  est  Veritas  ci\pravalebit,' 
words  so  great  that  I  could  almost  prefer  them  to  the  motto' of  our  own 
University,  '  Dominiis  illnminatio  mea.' "  In  his  excitement  he  ex- 
claimed, as  Stanley,  on  leaving  the  hall,  passed  close  by  him,  "  Do  you 
know,  sir,  that  the  words  you  quoted,  '  Magna  est  Veritas  et  proevalebit,' 
are  the  motto  of  the  Town  V  "  "  Is  it  possible  1  How  interesting  1 
When  will  you  come  and  see  me  and  talk  about  it  V "  cried  Stanley; 
and  from  that  moment  a  warm  friendship  sprang  up.  '  •  Then  and  after,  ' 
Mr.  Green  wrote,  "  I  heard  you  speak  of  work,  not  as  a  thing  of  classes 
and  fellowships,  but  as  something  worthy  for  its  own  sake,  worthy 
bocause  it  made  us  like  the  great  AVorker.  '  If  you  cannot  or  will  not 
work  at  the  work  which  Oxford  gives  you,  at  any  rate  work  at  some- 
thing.' I  took  up  my  old  boy-dreams  of  history  again.  I  think  I  have 
been  a  steady  worker  ever  since." 

It  was  during  these  years  at  Oxford  that  his  first  large  historical 
schemes  were  laid.  His  plan  took  the  shape  of  a  History  of  the  Arch- 
bishops of  Canterbury;  and  seeking  in  Augustine  and  his  followers  a 
clue  through  the  maze  of  fifteen  centuries,  he  projiosed  under  this  title 
to  write  in  fact  the  whole  story  of  christian  civilization  in  England. 
"No  existing  liLstoriiins  help  me,"  he  declared  in  his  early  days  of 
planning;  "  rather  I  have  been  struck  by  the  utter  blindness  of  one  and 
all  to  the  subject  which  they  profess  to  treat — the  national  growth  and 


Iv  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 


development  of  our  country."  When  in  1860  be  left  Oxford  for  the 
work  he  had  choseu  as  curate  in  one  of  the  poorest  parishes  of  East 
Ltindon.  he  carried  with  him  thoughts  of  history.  Letters  full  of 
ardent  discussion  of  the  theological  and  social  problems  about  him  still 
tell  of  hours  saved  here  and  "there  for  the  British  Museum,  of  work 
doue  on  Cuthbert,  on  Columba.  on  Irish  Church  History— of  a  scheme 
for  a  history  of  Somerset,  which  bid  fair  to  extend  far,  and  which  led 
direct  to  Glastonbury,  Dustan,  and  Early  English  matters.  Out  of  his 
poverty,  too,  he  had  gathered  books  about  him,  books  won  at  a  cost 
which  made  them  the  objects  of  a  singular  affection;  and  he  never 
opened  a  volume  of  his  "  Acta  Sanctorum  "  without  a  lingering  memory 
of  the  painful  efforts  by  which  he  had  brought  together  the  volumes 
one  by  one,  and  how  many  days  he  had  gone  without  dinner  when 
there  was  no  other  way  of  buying  them. 

But  books  were  not' his  only  sources  of  knowledge.  To  the  last  he 
looked  on  his  London  life  as  having  given  him  liis  best  lessons  in 
history.  It  was  with  his  church  wardens,  his  schoolmasters,  in  vestry 
meetings,  in  police  courts,  at  boards  of  guardians,  in  service  in  chapel 
or  churcli,  in  the  daily  life  of  the  dock-laborer,  the  tradesman,  the 
costermonger,  in  the  summer  visitation  of  cholera,  in  the  winter  misery 
that  followed  economic  changes,  that  he  learnt  what  the  life  of  the 
people  meant  as  perhaps  no  historian  had  ever  learnt  it  before.  Con- 
stantly struck  down  as  he  was  by  illness,  even  the  days  of  sickness 
were  turned  to  use.  Every  drive,  every  railway  journey,  every  town 
he  passed  through  in  brief  excursions  for  health's  sake,  added  some- 
thing to  his  knowledge  ;  if  ne  was  driven  to  recover  strength  to  a  sea- 
side lodging  he  could  still  note  a  description  of  Ebbsfleet  or  Rich- 
borough  or  Minster,  so  that  there  is  scarcely  a  picture  of  scenery  or  of 
geographical  conditions  in  his  book  which  is  not  the  record  of  a  victory 
over  the  overwhelming  languor  or  disease. 

After  two  years  of  observation,  of  reading,  and  of  thought,  the 
Archbishops  no  longer  seemed  very  certain  guides  through  the  centuries 
of  England's  growth.  They  filled  the  place,  it  would  appear,  no  better 
than  the  Kings.  If  some  of  them  were  great  leaders  among  the  people, 
others  were  of  little  account;  and  after  tlie  sixteenth  century  the  up- 
growth of  the  Nonconformists  broke  the  history  of  the  people,  taken 
from  the  merely  ecclesiastical  point  of  view,  into  two  irreconcilable 
fractions,  and  utterly  destroyed  any  possibility  of  artistic  treatment  of 
the  story  as  a  whole.  In  a  new  plan  he  looked  far  behind  Augustine 
and  Canterbury,  and  threw  himself  into  geology,  the  physical  geog- 
raphy of  our  island  in  prehistoric  times,  and  the  study  of  the  cave- 
men and  the  successive  races  that  peopled  Britain,  as  introductory  to 
the  later  history  of  England.  But  his  first  and  dominating  idea 
quickly  thrust  all  others  aside.  It  was  of  the  English  People  itself 
that  he  must  write  if  he  would  write  after  his  own  heart.  The  nine 
years  spent  in  the  monotonous  reaches  of  dreary  streets  that  make  up 
Hoxton  and  Stepney,  the  close  contact  with  sides  of  life  little  known 
to  students,  had  only  deepened  the  impressions  with  which  the  idea  of 
a  people's  life  had  in  Oxford  struck  on  his  imagination.  "  A  State," 
he  would  say,  "is  accidental  ;  it  can  be  made  or  unmade,  and  is  no 
real  thing  to  me.  But  a  nation  is  very  real  to  me.  That  you  can 
neither  make  nor  destroy."  All  his  writings,  the  historical  articles 
which  he  sent  to  the  Saturday  Review  and  letters  to  his  much-honored 
friend,  Mr.  Freeman,  alike  tended  in  the  same  direction,  and  show  how 


INTRODUCTION. 


persistently  he  was  working  out  his  philosophy  of  history.  The  lessons 
which  years  before  he  had  found  written  in  the  streets  and  lanes  of  his 
native  town  were  not  forgotten.  "History,"  he  wrote  in  1869,  "we 
are  told  by  publishers,  is  the  most  unpopular  of  all  branches  of  litera- 
ture at  the  present  day,  but  it  is  only  unpopular  because  it  seems  more 
and  more  to  sever  itself  from  all  that  can  touch  the  heart  of  a  people. 
In  medieval  history,  above  all,  the  narrow  ecclesiastical  character  of 
the  annals'  which  serve  as  its  base,  instead  of  being  corrected  by  a 
wider  research  into  the  memorials  which  surround  us,  has  been 
actually  intensified  by  the  partial  method  of  their  study,  till  the  story 
of  a  great  people  seems  likely  to  be  lost  in  the  mere  squabbles  of 
priests.  Now  there  is  hardly  a  better  corrective  for  all  this  to  be 
found  than  to  set  a  man  frankly  in  the  streets  of  a  simple  English  town, 
and  to  bid  him  work  out  the  history  of  the  men  who  had  lived  and 
died  there.  The  mill  by  the  stream,  the  tolls  in  the  market-place,  the 
brasses  of  its  burghers  in  the  ciiurch,  the  names  of  its  streets,  the 
lingering  memory  of  its  guilds,  the  mace  of  its  mayor,  tell  us  more  of 
the  past  of  England  than  the  spire  of  Sarum  or  the  martyrdom  of 
Canterbury.  We  say  designedly  of  the  past  of  England,  rather  than  of 
the  past  of  English  towns.  ...  In  England  the  history  of  the  town 
and  of  the  country  are  one.  The  privilege  of  the  burgher  has  speedily 
widened  into  the  liberty  of  the  people  at  large.  The  municipal  charter 
has  merged  into  the  great  charter  of  the  realm.  All  the  little  struggles 
over  toll  and  tax,  all  the  little  claims  of  '  custom '  and  franchise,  have 
told  on  the  general  advance  of  liberty  and  law.  The  townmotes  of  the 
Norman  reigns  tided  free  discussion  and  self-government  over  from  the 
Witanagemot  of  the  old  England  to  the  Parliament  of  the  new.  The 
busting  court,  with  its  resolute  assertion  of  justice  by  one's  peers,  gave 
us  tlie  whole  fabric  of  our  judicial  legislation.  The  Continental  town 
lost  its  individuality  by  sinking  to  the  servile  level  of  the  land  from 
which  it  had  isolated  itself.  The  English  town  lost  its  individuality  by 
lifting  the  country  at  large  to  its  own  level  of  freedom  and  law." 

The  earnestness,  however,  with  which  he  had  thrown  himself  into 
his  parish  work  left  no  time  for  anj'-  thought  of  working  out  his 
cherished  plans.  His  own  needs  were  few,  and  during  nearly  three 
years  he  spent  on  the  necessities  of  schools  and  of  the  poor  more  than 
the  whole  of  the  income  he  drew  from  the  Church,  while  he  provided 
for  his  own  support  by  writing  at  night,  after  his  day's  work  was  done, 
articles  for  the  Saturday  Review.  At  last,  in  1869,  the  disease  which 
had  again  and  again  attacked  him  fell  with  renewed  violence  on  a 
frame  exhausted  with  labors  and  anxieties.  All  active  work  was  for- 
Bver  at  an  end — the  doctors  told  him  there  was  little  hope  of  prolonging 
his  life  six  months.  It  was  at  this  moment,  the  first  moment  of  leisure 
he  had  ever  known,  that  Jie  proposed  "  to  set  down  a  few  notions  which 
I  have  conceived  concerning  history,"  which  "might  serve  as  an  in- 
troduction to  better  things  if  I  lived,  and  might  stand  for  some  work 
done  if  I  did  not."  The  "  Short  History  "  was  thus  begun.  When  the 
six  months  had  passed  he  had  resisted  the  first  severit}'  of  the  attack, 
but  he  remained  witli  scarcely  a  hold  on  life  ;  and  incessantly  vexed  by 
the  suffering  and  exhaustion  of  constant  illness,  perplexed  by  questions 
as  to  the  mere  means  of  livelihood,  thwarted  and  hindered  by  diffi- 
culties about  books  in  the  long  winters  abroad,  he  still  toiled  on  at  his 
task.  "I  wonder,  he  said  once  in  answer  to  some  critic,  "how  in 
those  years  of  physical  pain  and  despondency  I  could  ever  have  written 


vi  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 


the  book  at  all."     Ntarl}'  live   years  were  given    to   the  work.     Tlie 
sheets  wore  written  ami  rewritten,  corrected  ami  canceled  and    begun 
again  till   it  .seemed  as   though  revision  would   never    have  an    end. 
"  The  book  is  full  of  faults,"  he  declared  sorrowfully,  "which  make 
mc  almost  hopeless  of  ever  learning  to  write  well."     As  the  work  went 
on  his  friends  often  remonstrated  with  nuicli  energy.     Dean  Stanley 
could  not  forgive  its  missing  so  dramatic  an  oj)ening  as  Ca'sar's  landing 
would  have  iuTorded.     Others  judged  .severely  his  style,  his  uiethod, 
liis  view  of  histor}'-,  his  selection  and  rejection  of  facts.     Their  judg- 
ment left  him  "lonely,"  he  said;  and   with  the    sensitiveness  of  the 
artistic  nature,  its  quick  apprehension  of  un.seen  danger,  its  craving  for 
sympathy,  he  saw  with  perliai)S  needless  clearness  of  vision  the  perils 
to  his  chance  of  winning  a  hearing  which  were  prophesied.     He  agreed 
that  the  "  faults"  with  which  he  was  charged  might  cause  the  ruin  of 
his  hopes  of  being  accepted  either  by  historians  or  by  the  public;  and 
yet  these  very  "  faults,"  he  insisted,  were  bound  up  with   his   faith. 
The  book  was  in  fact,  if  not  in  name,  the  same  as  that  which  he  had 
planned  at  Oxford;  to  correct  its  "faults"  he  must  change  his  whole 
conception  of  histor^^ ;  be  must  renounce  his  belief  that  it  was  the  great 
impulses   of  national   feeling,  and    not  the  policy  of   statesmen,  that 
formed  the  ground-work  and  basis  of  the  history  of  nations,  and  his 
certainty  that  political  history  could  only  be  made  intelligible  and  just 
by  basing  it  on  social  history  in  its  largest  sense. 

"  I  ma.y  be  wrong  in  my  theories,"  he  wrote,  "but  it  is  better  for 
me  to  hold  to  what  I  think  true,  and  to  work  it  out  as  I  best  can,  even 
if  I  work  it  out  badly,  than  to  win  the  good  word  of  some  people  I 
respect  and  others  I  love"  by  giving  up  a  real  conviction.  Amid  all 
his  fears  as  to  the  failings  of  his  work  he  still  clung  to  the  belief  that  it 
went  on  the  old  traditional  lines  of  English  historians.  However 
Gibbon  might  err  in  massing  together  his  social  facts  in  chapters  apart, 
however  inadequate  Hume's  attempts  at  social  history  might  be,  how- 
ever JIacaulay  might  look  at  social  facts  merely  as  bits  of  external 
ornaments,  they  all,  he  maintained,  professed  the  faith  he  held.  He 
used  to  protest  that  even  those  English  historians  who  desired  to  be 
merely  "external  and  pragmatic"  could  not  altogether  reach  their  aim 
as  though  they  had  been  "High  Dutchmen."  The  free  current  of 
national  life  in  England  was  too  strong  to  allow  them  to  become  ever 
wholly  lost  in  State  papers  ;  and  because  he  believed  that  Englishmen 
could  therefore  best  combine  the  love  of  accuracy  and  the  appreciation 
of  the  outer  aspects  of  national  or  political  life  with  a  perception  of  the 
spiritual  forces  from  which  these  mere  outer  phenomena  proceed,  he 
never  doubted  that  "  the  English  ideal  of  history  would  in  the  long 
run  be  what  Gibbon  made  it  in  his  day — the  first  in  the  world." 

When  at  last,  by  a  miracle  of  resolution  and  endurance,  the  "  Short 
History  "  was  finished,  discouraging  reports  reached  him  from  critics 
whose  judgment  he  respected  ;  and  his  despondency  increased. 
"Never  mind,  you  mayn't  succeed  this  time,"  said  one  of  his  best 
friends,  "but  you  are  sure  to  succeed  .some  day."  He  never  forgot 
that  in  this  time  of  depression  there  were  two  friends,  Mr.  Stopford 
Brooke  and  his  publisher,  who  were  unwavering  in  their  belief  in  his 
work  and  in  hopefulness  of  the  result. 

The  book  was  ijublished  in  1874,  when  he  was  little  more  than  36 
years  of  age.  Before  a  month  was  over,  in  the  generous  welcome 
given  it  by  scholars  and  by  the  English  people,  he  found  the  reward  of 


INTRODUCTIOX.  vii 


his  long  endurance.  Mr.  Green  in  fact  was  the  first  historian  Avho  had 
eitlier  conceived  or  written  of  English  history  from  the  side  of  the 
principles  which  his  book  asserted  ;  and  in  so  doing  he  had  given  to  his 
fellow-citizens  such  a  story  of  their  Commonwealth  as  has  in  fact  uo 
paralle  in  any  other  country.  The  opposition  and  criticism  which  he 
met  with  were  in  part  a  measure  of  the  originality  of  his  conception. 
Success,  however,  and  criticism  alike  came  to  him  as  they  come  to  the 
true  scholar.  "  I  know,  he  said  in  this  first  moment  of  unexpected 
recognition,  "what  men  will  say  of  me,  'He  died  learning.'" 

In  his  "Long  History,"  as  given  in  the  present  edition,  he  had  at 
first  proposed  merely  to  prepare  a  library  edition  of  the  "Short 
History  "  revised  and  corrected.  In  his  hands,  however,  it  became  a 
wholly  different  book,  the  chief  part  of  it  having  been  rewritten  at 
at  much  greater  length,  and  on  an  altered  plan.  Though  since  his 
death  much  has  been  written  on  English  History,  his  main  conclusions 
may  be  regarded  as  established,  and  I  do  not  think  tliey  would  have 
been  modi  lied,  save  in  a  few  cases  of  detail,  even  by  such  books  as  the 
last  two  volumes  of  the  Bishop  of  Chester's  "  Constitutional  History," 
and  his  "Lectures  on  Modern  History  "  ;  T^Ir.  Gardiner's  later  volumes 
on  Charles's  reign,  and  Mr.  Skene's  latter  volumes  on  "Early  Scottish 
History.'' 

I  would  only  add  a  few  words  which  I  value  more  especially,  be- 
cause they  tell  how  the  sincerity,  the  patient  self-denial,  the  earnest- 
ness of  i)urpose,  that  underlay  all  his  vivid  activity  were  recognized 
by  one  who  was  ever  to  him  a  master  in  English  History,  the  Bishop 
of  Cliester.  "  ]\Ir.  Green,"  he  wrote,  "  possessed  in  no  scanty  measure 
all  the  gifts  which  contribute  to  the  making  of  a  great  historian.  He 
combined,  so  far  as  the  history  of  England  is  concerned,  a  complete 
and  firm  grasp  of  the  subject  in  its  unity  and  integrity  with  a  wonder- 
ful command  of  details,  and  a  thorough  sense  of  perspective  and  pro- 
portion. All  his  work  was  real  and  original  work  ;  few  people  besides 
those  who  knew  him  well  would  see  under  the  chaiming  case  and 
vi  vac  it}' of  his  style  tlie  deep  research  and  sustained  industry  of  the 
laborious  student.  But  it  was  so;  there  was  no  department  of  our 
national  records  that  he  had  not  studied  and,  I  think  1  may  say, 
mastered.  Hence  I  think  the  unity  of  his  dramatic  scenes  and  the 
cogency  of  his  historical  arguments.  Like  other  people  he  made  mis- 
takes sometimes;  but  scarcely  ever  does  the  correction  of  his  mistakes 
affect  eitlier  the  essence  of  the  picture  or  the  force  of  the  argument. 
/Ind  in  him  the  desire  of  stating  and  pointing  the  truth  of  history  was 
fls  strong  as  tlie  wish  to  make  both  his  pictures  and  his  arguments  tell- 
ing and  forcible.  He  never  treated  an  opposing  view  with  intolerance 
or  contumely;  his  handling  of  controversial  matter  was  exemplary. 
And  then,  to  add  still  more  to  the  debt  we  owe  him,  there  is  the 
wonderful  simplicity  and  beauty  of  the  way  in  which  he  tells  his  tale, 
which  more  than  anything  else  has  served  to  make  English  history  a 
popular,  and  as  it  ought  to  be,  if  not  the  first,  at  least  the  second  study 
of  all  Englishmen." 

Alices.  Green. 


•fl  DeOfcatc  tbls  JBooft 

TO 
TWO  DEAR  FRIENDS, 

MY  MASTERS -IN  THE  STUDY  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORk, 

FDWARD  AUGUSTUS  FREEMAN- 

AND 

WILLIAM  STUEBa. 


COKTEKTS. 
BOOK  I. 

EAELY  ENGLAND.    449—1071. 
CHAPTER  I. 

PAOR. 

Thk  English  Conquest  of  Britain.    449—577     ...       15 

CHAPTER  TI. 
Tb*  English  Kingdoms.    578—796 36 

CH4PTER  in 

WE&»fiX  AND  THE  NORTHMEN.     796—947  .  ...»         78 

CHAPTER  rV. 
Feudalism  and  thb  Monarchy.    954—1071  ....       95 


BOOK  II. 
ENGLAND  UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.    1071—1214. 

CHAPTER  I. 
The  Conqueror.    1071—1085 131 

CHAPTER  n. 
The  Norman  Kings.    1085—1154  ...       *       *       .       143 

CHAPTER  ra. 
Henry  the  Second.    1154—1189  ......       169 

CHAPTER  IV. 
The  Angevin  Kings.    1189—1204 190 


8  CONTENTS. 

BOOK  III. 

THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291. 
CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

John.    1214—1216 203 

CHAPTER  11. 
Henry  the  Third.    1216—1232       ......       258 

CHAPTER  in. 
The  Barons'  War.    1232—1272 279 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Edward  THE  First.    1272-180?      .       =       ....       331 

BOOK  IV. 

THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461. 

CHAPTER  I. 
Edward  the  Second.    1307—1327 383 

CHAPTER  II. 
Edward  the  Third.    1327—1347 397 

CHAPTER  III. 
The  Peasant  Revolt.    1347—1381 430 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Richard  the  Second.    1381 — 1400 489 

CHAPTER  V. 
The  House  op  Lancaster.    1399—1422 523 

CHAPTER  VI. 
The  Wars  of  the  Roses.    1422—1461 548 


BOOK  1 

EARLY  ENGLAND 

449—1071. 


AUTHOEITIES  FOR  BOOK:  I. 

(449—1071.) 

For  the  conquest  of  Britain  by  the  English  our  authorities  are 
scant  and  imperfect.  The  only  extant  British  account  is  the  "  Epis- 
tola"  of  Gildas,  a  work  written  probably  about  a.d.  560.  The  style 
of  Gildas  is  ditfuse  and  inflated,  but  his  book  is  of  great  value  in 
the  light  it  throws  on  the  state  of  the  island  at  that  time,  and  as 
giving  at  its  close  what  is  probably  the  native  story  of  the  conquest 
of  Kent.  This  is  the  only  part  of  the  struggle  of  which  we  have  any 
record  from  the  side  of  the  conquered.  The  English  conquerors,  on 
the  other  hand,  have  left  jottings  of  their  conquest  of  Kent,  Sussex, 
and  Wessex  in  the  curious  annals  which  form  the  opening  of  the 
compilation  now  known  as  the  "English"  or  "Anglo-Saxon  Chroni- 
cle," annals  which  are  undoubtedly  historic,  though  with  a  slight 
mythical  intermixture.  For  the  history  of  the  English  conquest  of 
mid-Britain  or  the  Eastern  Coast  we  possess  no  written  materials 
from  either  side ;  and  a  fragment  of  the  Annals  of  Northumbria 
embodied  in  the  later  compilation  ("Historia  Britonum")  which 
bears  the  name  of  Nennius  alone  throws  light  on  the  conquest  of 
the  North. 

From  these  inadequate  materials  however  Dr.  Guest  has  suc- 
ceeded by  a  wonderful  combination  of  historical  and  archaeological 
knowledge  in  constructing  a  narrative  of  the  conquest  of  Southern 
and  Southwestern  Britain  which  must  serve  as  the  starting-point 
for  all  future  inquirers.  This  narrative,  so  far  as  it  goes,  has  served 
as  the  basis  of  the  account  given  in  my  text ;  and  I  can  only  trust 
that  it  may  soon  be  embodied  in  some  more  accessible  form  than 
that  of  a  series  of  papers  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Archteologicrd 
Institute.  In  a  like  way  though  Kemble's  "Saxons  in  England" 
and  Sir  F.  Palgrave's  " History  of  the  English  Commonwealth"  (i' 
read  with  caution)  contain  much  that  is  worth  notice,  our  know! 
edge  of  the  primitive  constitution  of  the  English  people  and  th 
changes  introduced  into  it  since  their  settlement  in  Britain  must 
be  mainly  drawn  from  the  "Constitutional  History"  of  Professoj 
Stubbs.  In  my  earlier  book  I  had  not  the  advantage  of  aid  from 
this  invaluable  work,  which  was  then  unpublished  ;  in  the  present 
I  do  little  more  than  follow  it  in  all  constitutional  questions  as  far 
as  it  has  at  present  gone. 

Bajda's  "Historia  Ecclesiastica  Gentis  Anglorum,"  a  work  of 
which  I  have  spoken  in  my  text,  is  the  primary  authority  for  the 
history  of  the  Northumbrian  overlordship  which  followedthe  Con- 
quest. It  is  by  co{)ioiis  insertions  from  Baxla  tliat  the  meagre  reg- 
nal and  episcopal  annals  of  the  West  Saxons  have  been  brought  to 
the  shape  in  which  they  at  present  appear  in  the  part  of  the  English 


12  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 


Chronicle  which  concerns  this  period.  The  life  of  Wilfrid  by  Eddi, 
with  those  of  Cuthbert  by  an  anonymous  contemporary  and  by 
Ba?da  himself,  throw  great  light  on  the  religious  and  intellectual 
condition  of  the  North  at  the  time  of  its  supremacy.  But  with  the 
fall  of  Nortlmmbria  we  pass  into  a  period  of  historical  dearth.  A 
few  incidents  of  Mercian  history  are  preserved  among  the  meagre 
annals  of  Wessex  in  the  English  Chronicle :  but  for  the  most  part 
we  are  thrown  upon  later  writers,  especially  Henry  of  Huntingdon 
and  William  of  Malmesbury,  who,  though  authors  of  the  twelfth 
century,  had  access  to  older  materials  which  are  now  lost.  A  little 
ma}^  be  gleaned  from  biographies  such  as  that  of  Guthlac  of  Crow- 
laud  ;  but  the  letters  of  Boniface  and  Alcwine,  which  have  been 
edited  by  Jaff e  in  his  series  of  "  Monumeuta  Germanica, "  form  the 
most  valuable  contemporary  materials  for  this  period. 

From  the  rise  of  Wessex  our  history  rests  mainly  on  the  English 
Chronicle.  The  earlier  part  of  this  work,  as  we  have  said,  is  a 
compilation,  and  consists  of  (1)  Annals  of  the  Conquest  of  South 
Britain,  and  (2)  Short  Notices  of  the  Kings  and  Bishops  of  Wessex 
expanded  by  copious  insertions  from  Ba^da,  and  after  the  end  of 
his  work  by  brief  additions  from  some  northern  sources.  These 
materials  may  have  been  thrown  together  into  their  present  form  in 
Alfred's  time  as  a  preface  to  the  far  fuller  annals  which  begin  with 
the  reign  of  ^thelwulf,  and  which  widen  into  a  great  contemporary 
liistory  when  they  reach  that  of  Alfred  himself.  After  Alfred's 
day  the  Chronicle  varies  much  in  value.  Through  the  reign  of 
Eadward  the  Elder  it  is  copious,  and  a  Mercian  Chronicle  is  im- 
bedded in  it :  it  then  dies  down  into  a  series  of  scant  and  jejune 
entries,  broken  however  with  grand  battle-songs,  till  the  reign  of 
..ajlthelred  when  its  fulness  returns. 

Outside  the  Chronicle  we  encounter  a  great  and  valuable  mass  of 
historical  material  for  the  age  of  JElfred  and  his  successors.  The 
life  of  Alfred  which  bears  the  name  of  Asser,  puzzling  as  it  is  in 
some  ways,  is  probably  really  Asser's  work,  and  certainly  of  con- 
temporary authority.  The  Latin  rendering  of  the  English  Chronicle 
which  bears  the  name  of  ^thelweard  adds  a  little  to  our  knowledge 
of  this  time.  The  Laws,  which  form  the  base  of  our  constitutional 
knowledge  of  this  period,  fall,  as  has  been  well  pointed  out  by  Mr. 
Freeman,  into  two  classes.  Those  of  Eadward,  ^thelstan,  Ead- 
mund,  and  Eadgar,  are  like  the  earlier  laws  of  ^thelberht  and  Ine, 
"  mainly  of  the  nature  of  amendments  of  custom."  Those  of  Alfred, 
^ithelred,  Cnut,  with  those  which  bear  the  name  of  Eadward  the 
Confessor,  "aspire  to  the  character  of  Codes."  They  are  printed  in 
Mr.  Tliorpe's  "Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes  of  England,"  but  the 
extracts  given  by  Professor  Stubbs  in  his  "Select  Charters"  contain 
all  that  directly  bears  on  our  constitutional  growth.  A  vast  mass 
of  Charters  and  other  documents  belonging  to  this  period  has  been 
collected  by  Kemble  in  his  "Codex  Diplomaticus  -^vi  Saxonici," 
and  some  are  added  by  Mr.  Thorpe  in  his  "Diplomatarium  Anglo- 
Saxonicum."  Duustan's  biograxjhies  have  been  collected  and  edited 
by  Professor  Stubbs  in  the  series  published  by  the  Master  of  the 
Rolls. 

In  the  period  which  follows  the  accession  of  ^thelred  we  are 
still  aided  by  these  collections  of  royal  Laws  and  Charters,  and  the 


AUTHORITIES.  13 


English  Chronicle  becomes  of  great  importance.  Its  various  copies 
indeed  differ  so  much  in  tone  and  information  from  one  another 
that  they  may  to  some  extent  be  looked  upon  as  distinct  works,  and 
"Florence  of  Worcester"  is  probably  the  translation  of  a  valuable 
copy  of  the  "Chronicle"  which  has  disappeared.  The  translation 
however  was  made  in  the  twelfth  century,  ind  it  is  colored  by  the 
revival  of  national  feeling  which  was  characteristic  of  the  time. 
Of  Eadward  the  Confessor  himself  we  have  a  contemporary  biog- 
raphy (edited  by  Mr.  Luard  for  the  Master  of  the  Rolls)  which 
throws  gi'eat  light  on  the  personal  history  of  the  King  and  on  hia 
relations  to  the  house  of  Godwine. 

The  earlier  Norman  traditions  are  preserved  by  Dudo  of  St. 
Quentin,  a  verbose  and  confused  writer,  whose  work  was  abridged 
and  continued  by  William  of  Jumieges,  a  contemporary  of  the  Con- 
queror. William's  work  in  turn  served  as  the  basis  of  the  "  Roman 
de  Rou"  composed  by  Wace  in  ithe  time  of  Henry  the  Second.  The 
primary  authority  for  the  Conqueror  himself  is  the  "  Gesta  Williemi" 
of  his  chaplain  and  violent  partisan,  William  of  Poitiers.  For  the 
period  of  the  invasion,  in  which  the  English  authorities  are  meagre, 
we  have  besides  these  the  contemporary  "Carmen  de  Bello  Has- 
tingensi, "  by  Guy,  Bishop  of  Amiens,  and  the  pictures  in  the 
Bayeux  Tapestry.  Orderic,  a  writer  of  the  twelfth  century,  gossipy 
and  confused  but  honest  and  well-informed,  tells  us  much  of  the 
religious  movement  in  Normandy,  and  is  particularly  valuable  and 
detailed  in  his  account  of  the  period  after  the  battle  of  Senlac. 
^mong  secondary  authorities  for  the  Norman  Conquest,  Simeon  of 
Durham  is  useful  for  northern  matters,  and  William  of  Malmesbury 
worthy  of  note  for  his  remarkable  combination  of  Norman  and  Eng- 
lish feeling.  Domesday  Book  is  of  course  invaluable  for  the  Nor- 
man settlement.  The  chief  documents  for  the  early  history  of  Anjou 
have  been  collected  in  the  "Chroniques  d' Anjou"  published  by  the 
Historical  Society  of  France.  Those  which  are  authentic  are  little 
more  than  a  few  scant  annals  of  religious  houses ;  bvit  light  is 
thrown  on  them  by  the  contemporary  French  chronicles.  The 
"Gesta  Comitum"  is  nothing  but  a  compilation  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, in  which  a  mass  of  Angevin  romance  as  to  the  early  story  of 
the  Counts  is  dressed  into  historical  shape  by  copious  quotations 
from  these  French  historians. 

It  is  possible  that  fresh  light  may  be  thrown  on  our  earlier  his- 
tory when  historical  criticism  has  done  more  than  has  yet  been  done 
for  the  materials  given  us  by  Ireland  and  Wales.  For  Welsh  his- 
tory the  "Brut-y-Tywysogion"  and  the  "  Annales  Cambriee"  are  now 
accessible  in  the  series  published  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls ;  the 
"  Chronicle  of  Caradoc  of  Lancarvan"  is  translated  by  Fowel :  the 
Mabinogion,  or  Romantic  Tales,  have  been  published  by  Lady  Char- 
lotte Guest;  and  the  Welsh  Laws  collected  by  the  Record  Commis- 
sion. The  importance  of  these,  as  embodying  a  customary  code  of 
very  early  date,  will  probably  be  better  appreciated  when  we  possess 
the  whole  of  the  Brehon  Laws,  the  customary  laws  of  Ireland, 
which  are  now  being  issued  by  the  Irish  Laws  Commission,  and  to 
which  attention  has  justly  been  di-awn  by  Sir  Henry  Maine  ("Early 
History  of  Institutions")  as  preserving  Aryan  usages  of  the  remotest 
antiquity. 


14  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 


The  enoniKnis  mass  of  materials  which  exists  for  the  early  his- 
tory of  Ireland ,  various  as  they  are  in  critical  value,  may  be  seen  in 
Mr'  O'Curry's  "  Lectures  ou  the  Materials  of  Ancient  Irish  History  ;" 
and  they  may  be  conveniently  studied  by  the  general  reader  in  the 
"Annals  of  the  Four  Masters,"  edited  by  Dr.  O'Donovan.  But  this 
is  a  mere  compilation  (though  generally  a  faithful  one)  made  about 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  from  earlier  sources,  two  of 
which  have  been  published  in  the  Rolls  series.  One,  the  "Wars  of 
the  Gaedhil  with  the  Gaill,  '  is  an  account  of  the  Danish  wars  whicli 
may  have  been  written  in  the  eleventh  century  ;  the  other,  the 
"Annals  of  Loch  Ce, "  is  a  chronicle  of  Irish  affairs  from  the  end  o^ 
the  Danish  wars  to  1590.  The  "Chronicon  Scotorum"  (in  the  samp 
series)  extends  to  the  year  1150,  and  though  composed  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  is  valuable  from  the  learning  of  its  author,  Duald 
Mac-Firbis.  The  works  of  Colgan  are  to  Irish  church  affairs  what 
the  "Annals  of  the  Four  Masters"  are  to  Irish  civil  history.  They 
contain  a  vast  collection  of  translations  and  transcriptions  of  early 
saints'  lives,  from  those  of  Patrick  downward.  Adamnan's  "Life 
of  Columba"  (admirably  edited  by  Dr.  Reeves)  supplies  some  details 
to  the  story  of  the  Nortlumibrian  kingdom.  Among  more  miscel- 
laneous works  we  find  the  "  Book  of  Rights, "  a  summary  of  the  dues 
and  rights  of  the  several  over-kings  and  under-kings,  of  much 
earlier  date  probably  than  the  Norman  invasion  ;  and  Cormac's 
"  Glossary, "  attributed  to  the  tenth  century  and  certainly  an  early 
work,  from  which  much  may  be  gleaned  of  legal  and  social  details, 
and  something  of  the  pagan  religion  of  Ireland. 


CHAPTER  r. 

THE  ENGLISH  CONQUEST   OF  BRITAIN. 
449—577. 

For  the  fatherland  of  the  English  race  we  must  look  far 
away  from  England  itself.  In  the  fifth  century  after  the 
birth  of  Christ  the  one  country  which  we  know  to  have 
borne  the  name  of  Angeln  or  England  lay  within  the  dis- 
trict which  is  now  called  Sleswick,  a  district  in  the  heart 
of  the  peninsula  that  parts  the  Baltic  from  the  northern 
seas.  Its  pleasant  pastures,  its  black-timbered  homesteads, 
its  prim  little  townships  looking  down  on  inlets  of  purple 
water,  were  then  but  a  wild  waste  of  heather  and  sand, 
girt  along  the  coast  with  a  sunless  woodland  broken  here 
and  there  by  meadows  that  crept  down  to  the  marshes  and 
the  sea.  The  dwellers  in  this  district,  however,  seem  to 
have  been  merely  an  outlying  fragment  of  what  was  called 
the  Engle  or  English  folk,  the  bulk  of  whom  lay  probably 
in  what  is  now  Lower  Hanover  and  Oldenburg.  On  one 
side  of  them  the  Saxons  of  Westphalia  held  the  land  from 
the  Weser  to  the  Rhine;  on  the  other  the  Eastphalian  Sax- 
ons stretched  away  to  the  Elbe.  North  again  of  the  frag- 
ment of  the  English  folk  in  Sleswick  lay  another  kindred 
tribe,  the  Jutes,  whose  name  is  still  preserved  in  their 
district  of  Jutland.  Engle,  Saxon,  and  Jute  all  belonged 
to  the  same  Low-German  branch  of  the  Teutonic  familj^ ; 
and  at  the  moment  when  history  discovers  them  they  were 
being  drawn  together  by  the  ties  of  a  common  blood,  com- 
mon speech,  common  social  and  political  institutions. 
There  is  little  ground  indeed  for  believing  that  the  throe 
tribes  looked  on  themselves  as  one  people,  or  that  we  can 
as  yet  apply  to  them,  save  by  anticipation,  the  common 


16  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 


name  of  Englishmen.  But  each  of  them  was  destined  to 
share  in  the  conquest  of  the  land  in  which  we  live ;  and  it 
is  from  the  union  of  all  of  them  when  its  conquest  was 
complete  that  the  English  people  has  sprung. 

Of  the  temper  and  life  of  the  folk  in  this  older  England 
we  know  little.  But  from  the  glimpses  that  we  catch  of 
it  when  conquest  had  brought  them  to  the  shores  of  Brit- 
ain their  political  and  social  organization  must  have  been 
that  of  the  German  race  to  which  they  belonged.  In  their 
villages  lay  ready  formed  the  social  and  political  life  which 
is  round  us  in  the  England  of  to-day.  A  belt  of  forest  or 
waste  parted  each  from  its  fellow- villages,  and  within  this 
boundary  or  mark  the  "township,"  as  the  village  was  then 
called  from  the  "  tun"  or  rough  fence  and  trench  that  served 
as  its  simple  fortification,  formed  a  complete  and  indepen- 
dent body,  though  linked  by  ties  which  were  strengthening 
every  day  to  the  townships  about  it  and  the  tribe  of  which 
it  formed  a  part.  Its  social  centre  was  the  homestead 
where  the  setheling  or  eorl,  a  descendant  of  the  first  Eng- 
lish settlers  in  the  waste,  still  handed  down  the  blood  and 
traditions  of  his  fathers.  Around  this  komestead  or  SBthel, 
each  in  its  little  croft,  stood  the  lowlier  dwellings  of  free- 
lings  or  ceorls,  men  sprung,  it  may  be,  from  descendants 
of  the  earliest  settler  who  had  in  various  ways  forfeited 
their  claim  to  a  share  in  the  original  homestead,  or  more 
probably  from  incomers  into  the  village  who  had  since  set- 
tled round  it  and  been  admitted  to  a  share  in  the  land  and 
freedom  of  the  community.  The  eorl  was  distinguished 
from  his  fellow-villagers  by  his  wealth  and  his  nobler 
blood ;  he  was  held  by  them  in  an  hereditary  reverence ; 
and  it  was  from  him  and  his  fellow-sethelings  that  host- 
leaders,  whether  of  the  village  or  the  tribe,  were  chosen  in 
times  of  war.  But  this  claim  to  precedence  rested  simply 
on  the  free  recognition  of  his  fellow-villagers.  Within 
the  township  every  freeman  or  ceorl  was  equal.  It  was 
the  freeman  who  was  the  base  of  village  society.  He  was 
the  "  free-necked  man"  whose  long  hair  floated  over  a  neck 


UJ 

o 

< 

o 

CQ 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  17 

which  had  never  bowed  to  a  lord.  He  was  the  "  weaponed 
man"  who  alone  bore  spear  and  sword,  and  who  alone  pre- 
served that  right  of  self-redress  or  private  war  which  in 
such  a  state  of  society  formed  the  main  check  upon  lawless 
outrage. 

Among  the  English,  as  among  all  the  races  of  mankind, 
justice  had  originally  sprung  from  each  man's  personal 
action.  There  had  been  a  time  when  every  freeman  was 
his  own  avenger.  But  even  in  the  earliest  forms  of  Eng- 
lish society  of  which  we  find  traces  this  right  of  self-de- 
fence was  being  modified  and  restricted  by  a  growing  sense 
of  public  justice.  The  "blood-wite"  or  compensation  in 
money  for  personal  wrong  was  the  first  effort  of  the  tribe 
as  a  whole  to  regulate  private  revenge.  The  freeman's 
life  and  the  freeman's  limb  had  each  on  this  system  its 
legal  price.  "  Eye  for  eye, "  ran  the  rough  code,  and  "  life 
for  life,"  or  for  each  fair  damages.  We  see  a  further  step 
toward  the  modern  recognition  of  a  wrong  as  done  not  to 
the  individual  man  but  to  the  people  at  large  in  another 
custom  of  early  date.  The  price  of  life  or  limb  was  paid, 
not  by  the  wrong-doer  to  the  man  he  wronged,  but  by  the 
family  or  house  of  the  wrong-doer  to  the  family  or  house 
of  the  wronged.  Order  and  law  were  thus  made  to  rest 
in  each  little  group  of  people  upon  the  blood-bond  which 
knit  its  families  together ;  every  outrage  was  held  to  have 
been  done  by  all  who  were  linked  in  blood  to  the  doer  of 
it,  every  crime  to  have  been  done  against  all  who  were 
linked  in  blood  to  the  sufferer  from  it.  Prom  this  sense 
of  the  value  of  the  family  bond  as  a  means  of  restraining 
the  wrong-doer  by  forces  which  the  tribe  as  a  whole  did 
not  as  yet  possess  sprang  the  first  rude  forms  of  English 
justice.  Each  kinsman  was  his  kinsman's  keeper, 
bound  to  protect  him  from  wrong,  to  hinder  him  from 
wrong-doing,  and  to  suffer  with  him  and  pay  for  him  if 
wrong  were  done.  So  fully  was  this  principle  recognized 
that  even  if  any  man  was  charged  before  his  fellow-tribes- 
men with  crime  his  kinsfolk  still  remained  in  fact  his  sola 
Vol.  I.— 2 


18  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 


judges;  for  it  was  by  their  solemn  oath  of  his  innocence 
or  his  guilt  that  he  had  to  stand  or  fall. 

As  the  blood-bond  gave  its  first  form  to  English  justice, 
so  it  gave  their  first  forms  to  English  society  and  English 
warfare.  Kinsmen  fought  side  by  side  in  the  hour  of 
oattle,  and  the  feelings  of  honor  and  discipline  which  held 
^^o  host  together  were  drawn  from  the  common  duty  of 
everj'  man  in  each  little  group  of  warriors  to  his  house. 
And  as  they  fought  side  by  side  on  the  field,  so  they  dwelt 
side  by  side  on  the  soil.  Harling  abode  by  Harling,  and 
Billing  by  Billing;  and  each  "wick"  or  "ham"  or  "stead" 
or  "  tun"  took  its  name  from  the  kinsmen  who  dwelt  to- 
gether in  it.  In  this  way  the  home  or  "  ham"  of  the  Bill- 
ings was  Billingham,  and  the  "  tun"  or  township  of  the 
Harlings  was  Harlington.  But  in  such  settlements  the 
tie  of  blood  was  widened  into  the  larger  tie  of  land.  Land 
with  the  German  race  seems  at  a  very  early  time  to  have 
become  everywhere  the  accompaniment  of  full  freedom. 
The  freeman  was  strictly  the  free-holder,  and  the  exercise 
of  his  full  rights  as  a  free  member  of  the  comniTinity  to 
which  he  belonged  became  inseparable  from  the  possession 
of  his  "  holding"  in  it.  But  property  had  not  as  yet  reached 
that  stage  of  absolutely  personal  possession  which  the  social 
philosophy  of  a  later  time  falsely  regarded  as  its  earliest 
state.  The  woodland  and  pasture-land  of  an  English  vil- 
lage were  still  undivided,  and  every  free  villager  had  the 
right  of  turning  into  it  his  cattle  or  swine.  The  meadow- 
land  lay  in  like  manner  open  and  undivided  from  hay-har- 
vest to  spring.  It  was  only  when  grass  began  to  grow 
afresh  that  the  common  meadow  was  fenced  off  into  grass- 
fields,  one  for  each  household  in  the  village;  and  when 
hay-harvest  was  over  fence  and  division  were  at  an  end 
again.  The  plough-land  alone  was  permanently  allotted 
in  equal  shares  both  of  corn-land  and  fallow-land  to  the 
families  of  the  freemen,  though  even  the  plough-land  was 
subject  to  fresh  division  as  the  number  of  claimants  grew 
greater  or  less. 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  19 

It  was  this  sharing  in  the  common  land  which  marked 
off  the  freeman  or  ceorl  from  the  iinfree  man  or  Iset,  the 
tiller  of  land  which  another  owned.  As  the  ceorl  was  the 
descendant  of  settlers  who  whether  from  their  earlier  ar- 
rival or  from  kinship  with  the  original  settlers  of  the  vil- 
lage Tiad  been  admitted  to  a  share  in  its  land  and  its  cor- 
porate life,  so  the  Iset  was  a  descendant  of  later  comers  to 
whom  such  a  share  was  denied,  or  in  some  cases  perhaps 
of  earlier  dwellers  from  whom  the  laud  had  been  wrested 
by  force  of  arms.  In  the  modern  sense  of  freedom  the  Iset 
was  free  enough.  He  had  house  and  home  of  his  own,  his 
life  and  limb  were  as  secure  as  the  ceorl's — save  as  against 
his  lord ;  it  is  probable  from  what  we  see  in  later  laws  that 
as  time  went  on  he  was  recognized  among  the  three  tribes 
as  a  member  of  the  nation,  summoned  to  the  folk-moot, 
allowed  equal  right  at  law,  and  called  like  the  full  free 
man  to  the  hosting.  But  he  was  unfree  as  regards  lord 
and  land.  He  had  neither  part  nor  lot  in  the  common  land 
of  the  village.  The  ground  which  he  tilled  he  held  of 
some  free  man  of  the  tribe  to  whom  he  paid  rent  in  labor 
or  in  kind.  And  this  man  was  his  lord.  Whatever  rights 
the  unfree  villager  might  gain  in  the  general  social  life  of 
his  fellow- villagers,  he  had  no  rights  as  against  his  lord. 
He  could  leave  neither  land  nor  lord  at  his  will.  He  was 
bound  to  render  due  service  to  his  lord  in  tillage  or  in  fight. 
So  long,  however,  as  these  services  were  done  the  land  was 
his  own.  His  lord  could  not  take  it  from  him ;  and  he 
was  bound  to  give  him  aid  and  protection  in  exchange  for 
his  services. 

Far  different  from  the  position  of  the  last  was  that  of  the 
slave,  though  there  is  no  ground  for  believing  that  the 
slave  class  was  other  than  a  small  one.  It  was  a  class 
which  sprang  mainly  from  debt  or  crime.  Famine  drove 
men  to  "  bend  their  heads  in  the  evil  days  for  meat ;"  the 
debtor,  unable  to  discharge  his  debt,  flung  on  the  ground 
his  freeman's  sword  and  spear,  took  up  the  laborer's  mat- 
tock, and  placed  his  head  as  a  slave  within  a  master's 


20  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE,        [Book  I. 


hands.  The  criminal  whose  kinsfolk  would  not  make  up 
his  fine  became  a  crime-serf  of  the  plaintiff  or  the  king. 
Sometimes  a  father  pressed  by  need  sold  children  and  wife 
into  bondage.  In  any  case  the  slave  became  part  of  the 
live  stock  of  his  master's  estate,  to  be  willed  away  at  death 
with  horse  or  ox,  whose  pedigree  was  kept  as  carefully  as 
his  own.  His  children  were  bondsmen  like  himself;  even 
a  freeman's  children  by  a  slave  mother  inherited  the 
mother's  taint.  "  Mine  is  the  calf  that  is  born  of  my  cow," 
ran  an  English  proverb.  Slave  cabins  clustered  round  the 
homestead  of  every  rich  landowner ;  ploughman,  shepherd, 
goatherd,  swineherd,  oxherd  and  cowherd,  dairymaid,  barn- 
man,  soAver,  hayward  and  woodward,  were  often  slaves. 
It  was  not  indeed  slavery  such  as  we  have  known  in  mod- 
ern times,  for  stripes  and  bonds  were  rare :  if  the  slave  was 
slain  it  was  by  an  angry  blow,  not  by  the  lash.  But  his 
master  could  slay  him  if  he  would ;  it  was  but  a  chattel 
the  less.  The  slave  had  no  place  in  the  justice  court,  no 
kinsmen  to  claim  vengeance  or  guilt-fine  for  his  wrong.  If 
a  stranger  slew  him  his  lord  claimed  the  damages;  if 
guilty  of  wrong-doing,  "  his  skin  paid  for  him"  under  his 
master's  lash.  If  he  fled  he  might  be  chased  like  a  strayed 
beast,  and  when  caught  he  might  be  flogged  to  death.  If 
the  wrong-doer  were  a  woman-slave  she  might  be  burned. 
With  the  public  life  of  the  village,  however,  the  slave  had 
nothing,  the  Iset  in  early  days  little,  to  do.  In  its  moot, 
the  common  meeting  of  its  villagers  for  justice  and  gov- 
ernment, a  slave  had  no  place  or  voice,  while  the  Iset  waa 
originally  represented  by  the  lord  whose  land  he  tilled. 
The  life,  the  sovereignty  of  the  settlement  resided  solely  in 
the  body  of  the  freemen  whose  holdings  lay  round  the  moot- 
hill  or  the  sacred  tree  where  the  community  met  from  time 
to  time  to  deal  out  its  own  justice  and  to  make  its  own 
laws.  Here  new  settlers  were  admitted  to  the  freedom  of 
the  township,  and  by-laws  framed  and  headman  and  tith- 
ing-man  chosen  for  its  governance.  Here  ploughland  and 
meadow- land  were  shared  in  due  lot  among  the  villagers, 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  21 

and  field  and  homestead  passed  from  man  to  man  by  the 
delivery  of  a  turf  cut  from  its  soil.  Here  strife  of  farmer 
with  farmer  was  settled  according  to  the  "  customs"  of  the 
township  as  its  elder  men  stated  them,  and  four  men  were 
chosen  to  follow  headman  or  ealdorman  to  hundred-court 
or  war.  It  is  with  a  reverence  such  as  is  stirred  by  the 
sight  of  the  head-waters  of  some  mighty  river  that  one 
looks  back  to  these  village-moots  of  Friesland  or  Sleswick. 
It  was  here  that  England  learned  to  be  a  "  mother  of  Par- 
liaments." It  was  in  these  tiny  knots  of  farmers  that  the 
men  from  whom  Englishmen  were  to  spring  learned  the 
worth  of  public  opinion,  of  public  discussion,  the  worth  of 
the  agreement,  the  "common  sense,"  the  general  convic- 
tion to  which  discussion  leads,  as  of  the  laws  which  derive 
their  force  from  being  expressions  of  that  general  convic- 
tion. A  humorist  of  our  own  day  has  laughed  at  Parlia- 
ments as  "talking  shops,"  and  the  laugh  has  been  echoed 
by  some  who  have  taken  humor  for  argument.  But  talk 
is  persuasion,  and  persuasion  is  force,  the  one  force  which 
can  sway  freemen  to  deeds  such  as  those  which  have  made 
England  what  she  is.  The  "  talk"  of  the  village  moot,  the 
strife  and  judgment  of  men  giving  freely  their  own  rede 
and  setting  it  as  freely  aside  for  what  they  learn  to  be  the 
wiser  rede  of  other  men,  is  the  groundwork  of  English 
history. 

Small  therefore  as  it  might  be,  the  township  or  village 
was  thus  the  primary  and  perfect  type  of  English  life,  do- 
mestic, social,  and  political.  All  that  England  has  been 
since  lay  there.  But  changes  of  which  we  know  nothing 
had  long  before  the  time  at  which  our  history  opens 
grouped  these  little  commonwealths  together  in  larger  com- 
munities, whether  we  name  them  Tribe,  People,  or  Folk. 
The  ties  of  race  and  kindred  were  no  doubt  drawn  tightei' 
by  the  needs  of  war.  The  organization  of  each  Folk,  as 
such,  sprang  in  all  likelihood  mainly  from  war,  from  a 
common  greed  of  conquest,  a  common  need  of  defence. 
Its  form  at  any  rate  was  wholly  military.     The  Folk-moot 


23  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 


was  in  fact  the  war-host,  the  gathering  of  every  freeman 
of  the  tribe  in  arms.  The  head  of  the  Folk,  a  head  who 
existed  only  so  long  as  war  went  on,  was  the  leader  whom 
the  host  chose  to  command  it.  Its  Witenagemote  or  meet- 
ing of  wise  men  was  the  host's  council  of  war,  the  gather- 
ing of  those  ealdormen  who  had  brought  the  men  of  their 
villages  to  the  field.  The  host  was  formed  by  levies  from 
the  various  districts  of  the  tribe;  the  larger  of  which  prob- 
ably owed  their  name  of  "  hundreds"  to  the  hundred  war- 
riors which  each  originally  sent  to  it.  In  historic  times, 
however,  the  regularity  of  such  a  military  organization,  if 
it  ever  existed,  had  passed  away,  and  the  quotas  varied 
with  the  varying  customs  of  each  district.  But  men, 
whether  many  or  few,  were  still  due  from  each  district  to 
the  host,  and  a  cry  of  war  at  once  called  town-reeve  and 
hundred-reeve  with  their  followers  to  the  field. 

The  military  organization  of  the  tribe  thus  gave  from 
the  first  its  form  to  the  civil  organization.  But  the  pecul- 
iar shape  which  its  civil  organization  assumed  was  deter- 
mined by  a  principle  familiar  to  the  Germanic  races  and 
destined  to  exercise  a  vast  influence  on  the  future  of  man- 
kind. This  was  the  principle  of  representation.  The  four 
or  ten  villagers  who  followed  the  reeve  of  each  township 
to  the  general  muster  of  the  hundred  were  held  to  represent 
the  whole  body  of  the  township  from  whence  they  came. 
Their  voice  was  its  voice,  their  doing  its  doing,  their  pledge 
its  pledge.  The  hundred-moot,  a  moot  which  was  made 
by  this  gathering  of  the  representatives  of  the  townships 
that  lay  within  its  bounds,  thus  became  at  once  a  court  of 
appeal  from  the  moots  of  each  separate  village  as  well  as 
of  arbitration  in  dispute  between  township  and  township. 
The  judgment  of  graver  crimes  and  of  life  or  death  fell  to 
its  share ,  while  it  necessarily  possessed  the  same  right  of 
law-making  for  the  hundred  that  the  village-moot  possessed 
for  each  separate  village.  And  as  hundred-moot  stood 
above  town-moot,  so  above  the  hundred-moot  stood  the 
Folk-moot,  the  general  muster  of  the  people  in  arms,  at 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  33 

once  war-host  and  highest  law-court  and  general  Parlia- 
ment of  the  tribe.  But  whether  in  Folk-moot  or  hundred- 
moot,  the  principle  of  representation  was  preserved.  In 
both  the  constitutional  forms,  the  forms  of  deliberation  and 
decision,  were  the  same.  In  each  the  priests  proclaimed 
silence,  the  ealdormen  of  higher  blood  spoke,  groups  of 
freemen  from  each  township  stood  round,  shaking  their 
spears  in  assent,  clashing  shields  in  applause,  settling  mat- 
ters in  the  end  by  loud  shouts  of  "  Aye"  or  "  Nay." 

Of  the  social  or  the  industrial  life  of  our  fathers  in  this 
older  England  we  know  less  than  of  their  political  life. 
But  there  is  no  ground  for  believing  them  to  have  been 
very  different  in  these  respects  from  the  other  German 
peoples  who  were  soon  to  overwhelm  the  Roman  world. 
Though  their  border  nowhere  touched  the  border  of  the 
Empire  they  were  far  from  being  utterly  strange  to  its 
civilization.  Roman  commerce  indeed  reached  the  shores 
of  the  Baltic,  and  we  have  abundant  evidence  that  the  arts 
and  refinement  of  Rome  were  brought  into  contact  with 
these  earlier  Englishmen.  Brooches,  sword-belts,  and 
shield-bosses  which  have  been  found  in  Sleswick,  and 
which  can  be  dated  not  later  than  the  close  of  the  third 
century,  are  clearly  either  of  Roman  make  or  closely  mod- 
elled on  Roman  metal-work.  The  vessels  of  twisted  glass 
which  we  know  to  have  been  in  use  at  the  tables  of  Eng- 
lish and  Saxon  chieftains  came,  we  can  hardly  doubt,  from 
Roman  glass-works.  Discoveries  of  Roman  coins  in  Sles- 
wick peat-mosses  afford  a  yet  more  conclusive  proof  of 
direct  intercourse  with  the  Empire.  But  apart  from  these 
outer  influences  the  men  of  the  three  tribes  were  far  from 
being  mere  savages.  They  were  fierce  warriors,  but  they 
were  also  busy  fishers  and  tillers  of  the  soil,  as  proud  of 
their  skill  in  handling  plough  and  mattock  or  steering  the 
rude  boat  with  which  they  hunted  walrus  and  whale  as  of 
their  skill  in  handling  sword  and  spear.  They  were  hard 
drinkers,  no  doubt,  as  they  were  hard  toilers,  and  the  "  ale- 
feast"  was  the  centre  of  their  social  life.     But  coarse  as 


24  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

the  revel  might  seem  to  modern  eyes,  the  scene  within  the 
timbered  hall  which  rose  in  the  midst  of  their  villages  was 
often  Homeric  in  its  simplicity  and  dignity.  Queen  or 
eorl's  wife  with  a  train  of  maidens  bore  ale-bowl  or  mead- 
bowl  round  the  hall  from  the  high  settle  of  king  or  eal- 
dorman  in  the  midst  to  the  mead  benches  ranged  around 
its  walls,  while  the  gleeman  sang  the  hero-songs  of  his 
race.  Dress  and  arms  showed  traces  of  a  love  of  art  and 
beauty,  none  the  less  real  that  it  was  rude  and  incomplete. 
Rings,  amulets,  ear-rings,  neck  pendants,  proved  in  their 
workmanship  the  deftness  of  the  goldsmith's  art.  Cloaks 
were  often  fastened  with  golden  buckles  of  curious  and  ex- 
quisite form,  set  sometimes  with  rough  jewels  and  inlaid 
with  enamel.  The  bronze  boar-crest  on  the  warrior's  hel- 
met, the  intricate  adornment  of  the  warrior's  shield,  tell 
like  the  honor  in  which  the  smith  was  held  their  tale  of 
industrial  art.  It  is  only  in  the  English  potter}-',  hand- 
made, and  marked  with  coarse  zigzag  patterns,  that  we 
find  traces  of  utter  rudeness. 

The  religion  of  these  men  was  the  same  as  that  of  the 
rest  of  the  German  peoples.  Christianity  had  by  this  time 
brought  about  the  conversion  of  the  Roman  Empire,  but 
it  had  not  penetrated  as  yet  among  the  forests  of  the  north. 
The  common  God  of  the  English  people  was  Woden,  the 
war-god,  the  guardian  of  ways  and  boundaries,  to  whom 
his  worshippers  attributed  the  invention  of  letters,  and 
whom  every  tribe  held  to  be  the  first  ancestor  of  its  kings. 
Our  own  names  for  the  days  of  the  week  still  recall  to  us 
the  gods  whom  our  fathers  worshipped  in  their  German 
homeland.  Wednesday  is  Woden's-day,  as  Thursday  is 
the  day  of  Thunder,  the  god  of  air  and  storm  and  rain. 
Friday  is  Frea's-day,  the  deity  of  peace  and  joy  and  fruit- 
fulness,  whose  emblems,  borne  aloft  by  dancing  maidens, 
brought  increase  to  every  field  and  stall  they  visited.  Sat- 
urday commemorates  an  obscure  god  Saetere ;  Tuesday  the 
dark  god,  Tiw,  to  meet  whom  was  death.  Eostre,  the  god 
of  the  dawn  or  of  the  spring,  lends  his  name  to  the  Chris- 


CHAP.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  25 

tian  festival  of  the  Resurrection.  Behind  these  floated  the 
dim  shapes  of  an  older  mythology;  "Wyrd,"  the  death- 
goddess,  whose  memory  lingered  long  in  the  "Weird" 
of  northern  superstition;  or  the  Shield-maidens,  the 
"  mighty  women"  who,  an  old  rhyme  tells  us,  "  wrought  on 
the  battle-field  their  toil  and  hurled  the  thrilling  javelins." 
Nearer  to  the  popular  fancy  lay  deities  of  wood  and  fell  or 
hero-gods  of  legend  and  song ;  Nicor,  the  water-sprite  who 
survives  in  our  nixies  and  "  Old  Nick ;"  Weland,  the  forger' 
of  weighty  shields  and  sharp-biting  swords,  who  found  a 
later  home  in  the  "  Weyland's  smithy"  of  Berkshire ;  Egil, 
the  hero  archer,  whose  legend  is  one  with  that  of  Cloudesly 
or  Tell.  A  nature-worship  of  this  sort  lent  itself  ill  to  the 
purposes  of  a  priesthood ;  and  though  a  priestly  class  ex- 
isted it  seems  at  no  time  to  have  had  much  weight  among 
Englishmen.  As  each  freeman  was  his  own  judge  and 
his  own  lawmaker,  so  he  was  his  own  house-priest ;  and 
English  worship  lay  commonly  in  the  sacrifice  which  the 
house-father  offered  to  the  gods  of  his  hearth. 

It  is  not  indeed  in  Woden-worship  or  in  the  worship  of 
the  older  gods  of  flood  and  fell  that  we  must  look  for  the 
real  religion  of  our  fathers.  The  Song  of  Beowulf,  though 
the  earliest  of  English  poems,  is  as  we  have  it  now  a  poem 
of  the  eighth  century,  the  work  it  may  be  of  some  Eng- 
lish missionary  of  the  days  of  Baeda  and  Boniface,  who 
gathered  in  the  very  homeland  of  his  race  the  legends  of 
its  earlier  prime.  But  the  thin  veil  of  Christianity  which 
he  has  flung  over  it  fades  away  as  we  follow  the  hero- 
legend  of  our  fathers ;  and  the  secret  of  their  moral  tem- 
per, of  their  conception  of  life  breathes  through  every  line. 
Life  was  built  with  then  not  on  the  hope  of  a  hereafter, 
but  on  the  proud  self-consciousness  of  noble  souls.  "  I  have 
this  folk  ruled  these  fifty  winters,"  sings  a  hero-king  as 
he  sits  death-smitten  beside  the  dragon's  mound.  "  Lives 
there  no  folk-king  of  kings  about  me — not  any  one  of  them 
— dare  in  the  war-strife  Avelcome  my  onset !  Time's  change 
and  chances  I  have  abided,  held  my  own  fairly,  sought  not 


20  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I 


to  snare  men;  oath  never  sware  I  falsely  against  right. 
So  for  all  this  may  I  glad  be  at  heart  now,  sick  tliough  I 
sit  here,  wounded  with  death-wounds!"  In  men  of  such 
a  temper,  strong  with  the  strength  of  manhood  and  full  of 
the  vigor  and  the  love  of  life,  the  sense  of  its  shortness  and 
of  the  mystery  of  it  all  woke  chords  of  a  pathetic  poetr\- 
"  Soon  will  it  be,"  ran  the  warning  rhyme,  "that  sickm 
or  sword-blade  shear  thy  strength  from  thee,  or  the  tii. 
ring  thee,  or  the  flood  whelm  thee,  or  the  sword  grip  thee, 
or  arrow  hit  thee,  or  age  o'ertake  thee,  and  thine  eye's 
brightness  sink  down  in  darkness."  Strong  as  he  might 
be,  man  struggled  in  vain  with  the  doom  that  encompassed 
him,  that  girded  his  life  with  a  thousand  perils  and  broke 
it  at  so  short  a  span.  "To  us,"  cries  Beowulf  in  his  last 
fight,  "  to  us  it  shall  be  as  our  Weird  betides,  that  Weird 
that  is  every  man's  lord!"  But  the  sadness  with  which 
these  Englishmen  fronted  the  mysteries  of  life  and  death 
liad  nothing  in  it  of  the  unmanly  despair  which  bids  men 
eat  and  drink  for  to-morrow  they  die.  Death  leaves  man 
man  and  master  of  his  fate.  The  thought  of  good  fame, 
of  manhood,  is  stronger  than  the  thought  of  doom.  "  Well 
shall  a  man  do  when  in  the  strife  he  minds  but  of  winning 
longsome  renown,  nor  for  his  life  cares!"  "Death  is  bet- 
ter than  life  of  shame!"  cries  Beowulf's  sword-fellow. 
Beowulf  himself  takes  up  his  strife  with  the  fiend,  "  go  the 
weird  as  it  will."  If  life  is  short,  the  more  cause  to  work 
bravely  till  it  is  over,  "  Each  man  of  us  shall  abide  the 
end  of  his  life-work;  let  him  that  may  work,  work  his 
doomed  deeds  ere  death  come !" 

The  energy  of  these  peoples  found  vent  in  a  restlessness 
which  drove  them  to  take  part  in  the  general  attack  of  the 
German  race  on  the  Empire  of  Rome.  For  busy  tillers 
and  busy  fishers  as  Englishmen  were,  they  were  at  heart 
fighters;  and  their  world  was  a  world  of  war.  Tribe 
warred  with  tribe,  and  village  with  village ;  even  within 
the  township  itself  feuds  parted  household  from  household, 
and  passions  of  hatred  and  vengeance  were  handed  on  from 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071,  27 

father  to  son.  Their  mood  was  above  all  a  mood  of  fight- 
ing men,  venturesome,  self-reliant,  proud,  with  a  dash  of 
hardness  and  cruelty  in  it,  but  ennobled  by  the  virtues 
which  spring  from  war,  by  personal  courage  and  loyalty 
to  plighted  word,  by  a  high  and  stern  sense  of  manhood 
and  the  worth  of  man.  A  grim  joy  in  hard  fighting  was 
already  a  characteristic  of  the  race.  War  was  the  English- 
man's "shield-play"  and  "sword-game;"  the  gleeman's 
verse  took  fresh  fire  as  he  sang  of  the  rush  of  the  host  and 
the  crash  of  its  shield-line.  Their  arms  and  weapons,  hel- 
met and  mailshirt,  tall  spear  and  javelin,  sword  and  seax, 
the  short  broad  dcsgger  that  hung  at  each  warrior's  girdle, 
gathered  to  them  much  of  the  legend  and  the  art  which 
gave  color  and  poetry  to  the  life  of  Englishmen.  Each 
sword  had  its  name  like  a  living  thing.  And  next  to  their 
love  of  war  came  their  love  of  the  sea.  EveryAvhere 
throughout  Beowulf's  song,  as  everywhere  throughout  the 
life  that  it  pictures,  we  catch  the  salt  whiff  of  the  sea. 
The  Englishman  was  as  proud  of  his  sea-craft  as  of  his 
war-craft;  sword  in  teeth  he  plunged  into  the  sea  to  meet 
walrus  and  sea-lion;  he  told  of  his  whale-chase  amid  the 
icy  waters  of  the  north.  Hardly  less  than  his  love  for  the 
sea  was  the  love  he  bore  to  the  ship  that  traversed  it.  In 
the  fond  playfulness  of  English  verse  the  ship  was  "  the 
wave-floater,"  "the  foam -necked,"  "like  a  bird"  as  it 
skimmed  the  wave-crest,  "  like  a  swan"  as  its  curved  prow 
breasted  the  "  swan-road"  of  the  sea. 

Their  passion  for  the  sea  marked  out  for  them  their  part 
•n  the  general  movement  of  the  German  nations.  While 
jroth  and  Lombard  were  slowly  advancing  over  mountain 
and  plain  the  boats  of  the  Englishmen  pushed  faster  over 
the  sea.  Bands  of  English  rovers,  outdriven  by  stress  of 
fight,  had  long  found  a  home  there,  and  lived  as  the}^  could 
b}'  sack  of  vessel  or  coast.  Chance  has  preserved  for  us  in 
a  Sleswick  peat-bog  one  of  the  war-keels  of  these  early 
pirates.  The  boat  is  flat-bottomed,  seventy  feet  long  and 
eight  or  nine  feet  wide,  its  sides  of  oak  boards  fastened 


28  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 


with  bark  ropes  and  iron  bolts.  Fifty  oars  drove  it  over 
the  waves  with  a  freight  of  warriors  whose  arms,  axes, 
swords,  lauces,  and  knives  were  found  heaped  together  in 
its  hold.  Like  the  galleys  of  the  Middle  Ages  such  boats 
could  only  creep  cautiously  along  from  harbor  to  harbor  in 
rough  weather ;  but  in  smooth  water  their  swiftness  fitted 
them  admirably  for  the  piracy  by  which  the  men  of  these 
tribes  were  already  making  themselves  dreaded.  Its  flat 
bottom  enabled  them  to  beach  the  vessel  on  any  fitting 
coast ;  and  a  step  on  shore  at  once  transformed  the  boat- 
men into  a  war-band.  From  the  first  the  daring  of  the 
English  race  broke  out  in  the  secrecy  and  suddenness  of 
the  pirates'  swoop,  in  the  fierceness  of  their  onset,  in  the 
careless  glee  with  which  they  seized  either  sword  or  oar. 
"Foes  are  they,"  sang  a  Roman  poet  of  the  time,  "fierce 
beyond  other  foes  and  cunning  as  they  are  fierce ;  the  sea 
is  their  school  of  war  and  the  storm  their  friend ;  they  are 
sea-wolves  that  prey  on  the  pillage  of  the  world !" 

Of  the  three  English  tribes  the  Saxons  la}^  nearest  to  the 
Empire,  and  they  were  naturally  the  first  to  touch  the  Ro- 
man world ;  before  the  close  of  the  third  century  indeed 
their  boats  appeared  in  such  force  in  the  English  Channel 
as  to  call  for  a  special  fleet  to  resist  them.  The  piracy  of 
our  fathers  had  thus  brought  them  to  the  shores  of  a  land 
which,  dear  as  it  is  now  to  Englishmen,  had  not  as  yet 
been  trodden  by  English  feet.  This  land  was  Britain. 
When  the  Saxon  boats  touched  its  coast  the  island  was  the 
westernmost  province  of  the  Roman  Empire.  In  the  fifty- 
fifth  year  before  Christ  a  descent  of  Julius  Csesar  revealed 
it  to  the  Roman  world;  and  a  century  after  Ceesar's  land- 
ing the  Emperor  Claudius  undertook  its  conquest.  The 
work  was  swiftly  carried  out.  Before  thirty  years  were 
over  the  bulk  of  the  island  had  passed  beneath  the  Roman 
sway  and  the  Roman  frontier  had  been  carried  to  the  Firths 
of  Forth  and  of  Clyde.  The  work  of  civilization  followed 
fast  on  the  work  of  the  sword.  To  the  last  indeed  the  dis- 
tance of  the  island  from  the  seat  of  empire  left  her  less 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  29 

Romanized  than  any  other  province  of  the  west.  The  bulk 
of  the  population  scattered  over  the  country  seem  in  spite 
of  imperial  edicts  to  have  clung  to  their  old  law  as  to  their 
old  language,  and  to  have  retained  some  traditional  alle- 
giance to  their  native  chiefs.  But  Roman  civilization 
rested  rnainly  on  city  life,  and  in  Britain  as  elsewhere  the 
city  was  thoroughly  Roman.  In  towns  such  as  Lincoln 
or  York,  governed  by  their  own  municipal  officers,  guarded 
by  massive  walls,  and  linked  together  by  a  network  of 
magnificent  roads  which  reached  from  one  end  of  the  island 
to  the  other,  manners,  language,  political  life,  all  were  of 
Rome. 

For  three  hundred  years  the  Roman  sword  secured  order 
and  peace  without  Britain  and  within,  and  with  peace  and 
order  came  a  wide  and  rapid  prosperity.  Commerce 
sprang  up  in  ports  among  which  London  held  the  first 
rank ;  agriculture  flourished  till  Britain  became  one  of  the 
corn-exporting  countries  of  the  world;  the  mineral  re- 
sources of  the  province  were  explored  in  the  tin  mines  of 
Cornwall,  the  lead  mines  of  Somerset  or  Northumberland, 
and  the  iron  mines  of  the  Forest  of  Dean.  But  evils  which 
sapped  the  strength  of  the  whole  Empire  told  at  last  on 
the  province  of  Britain.  Wealth  and  population  alike  de- 
clined under  a  crushing  system  of  taxation,  under  restric- 
tions which  fettered  industry,  under  a  despotism  which 
crushed  out  all  local  independence.  And  with  decay 
within  came  danger  from  without.  For  centuries  past 
the  Roman  frontier  had  held  back  the  barbaric  world  be- 
yond it,  the  Parthian  of  the  Euphrates,  the  Numidian  of 
the  African  desert,  the  German  of  the  Danube  or  the  Rhine. 
In  Britain  a  wall  drawn  from  Xewcastle  to  Carlisle  bridled 
the  British  tribes,  the  Picts  as  they  were  called,  who  had 
been  sheltered  from  Roman  conquest  by  the  fastnesses  of 
the  Highlands.  It  was  this  mass  of  savage  barbarism 
which  broke  upon  the  Empire  as  it  sank  into  decay.  In 
its  western  dominions  the  triumph  of  these  assailants  was 
complete.     The  Franks  conquered  and  colonized  Gaul. 


30  niSTOEY  OF  TUE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 


The  West-Goths  conquered  and  colonized  Spain.  The 
Vandals  founded  a  kingdom  in  Africa.  The  Burgundians 
encamped  in  the  border-land  between  Italy  and  the  Rhone. 
The  East- Goths  ruled  at  last  in  Italy  itself. 

It  was  to  defend  Italy  against  the  Goths  that  Rome  in 
the  opening  of  the  fifth  century  withdrew  her  legions  from 
Britain,  and  from  that  moment  the  province  was  left  to 
struggle  unaided  against  the  Picts.     Nor  were  these  its 
only  enemies.     While  marauders  from  Ireland,  whose  in- 
habitants then  bore  the  name  of  Scots,  harried  the  west, 
the  boats  of  Saxon  pirates,  as  we  have  seen,  were  swarm- 
ing ojff  its  eastern  and  southern  coasts.     For  forty  years 
Britain  held  bravely  out  against  these  assailants ;  but  civil 
strife  broke  its  powers  of  resistance,  and  its  rulers  fell  back 
at  last  on  the  fatal  policy  by  which  the  Empire  invited  its 
doom  while  striving  to  avert  it,  the  policy  of  matching 
barbarian  against  barbarian.     By  the  usual  promises  of 
land  and  pay  a  band  of  warriors  was  drawn  for  this  pur- 
pose from  Jutland  in  449  with  two  ealdormen,   Hengest 
and  Horsa,  at  their  head.     If  by  English  history  we  mean 
the  history  of  Englishmen  in  the  land  which  from  that 
time  they  made  their  own,  it  is  with  this  landing  of  Hen- 
gest's  war-band  that  English  history  begins.     They  landed 
on  the  shores  of  the  Isle  of  Thanet  at  a  spot  known  since 
as  Ebbsfleet.     No  spot  can  be  so  sacred  to  Englishmen  as 
the  spot  which  first  felt  the  tread  of  English  feet.     There 
is  little  to  catch  the  eye  in  Ebbsfleet  itself,  a  mere  lift  of 
ground  with  a  few  gray  cottages  dotted  over  it,  cut  off 
nowadays  from  the  sea  by  a  reclaimed  meadow  and  a  sea 
wall.     But  taken  as  a  whole  the  scene  has  a  wild  beauty 
of  its  own.     To  the  right  the  white  curve  of  Ramsgate 
cliffs  looks  down  on  the  crescent  of  Pegwell  Bay ;  far  away 
to  the  left  across  gray  marsh-levels  where  smoke-wreaths 
mark  the  site  of  Richborough  and  Sandwich  the  coast-line 
trends  dimly  toward  Deal.     Everything  in  the  character 
of  the  spot  confirms  the  national  tradition  which  fixed  here 
the  landing-place  of  our  fathers ;  for  the  physical  changes 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     419—1071.  31 


of  the  country  since  the  fifth  century  have  told  little  on  its 
main  features.  At  the  time  of  Hengest's  landing  a  broad 
inlet  of  sea  parted  Thanet  from  the  mainland  of  Britain; 
and  through  tliis  inlet  the  pirate  boats  would  naturally 
come  sailing  with  a  fair  wind  to  what  was  then  the  gravel- 
spit  of  Ebbsfleet. 

The  work  for  which  the  mercenaries  had  been  hired  was 
quickly  done ;  and  the  Picts  are  said  to  have  been  scattered 
to  the  winds  in  a  battle  fought  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Brit- 
ain. But  danger  from  the  Pict  was  hardly  over  when 
danger  came  from  the  Jutea  themselves.  Their  fellow- 
pirates  must  have  flocked  from  the  Channel  to  their  set- 
tlement in  Thanet;  the  inlet  between  Thanet  and  the 
mainland  was  crossed,  and  the  Englishmen  won  their  first 
victory  over  the  Britons  in  forcing  their  passage  of  the 
Medway  at  the  village  of  Aylesford.  A  second  defeat  at 
the  passage  of  the  Cray  drove  the  British  forces  in  terror 
upon  London ;  but  the  ground  was  soon  won  back  again, 
and  it  was  not  till  465  that  a  series  of  petty  conflicts  which 
had  gone  on  along  the  shores  of  Thanet  made  way  for  a 
decisive  struggle  at  Wippedsfleet.  Here  however  the  over- 
throw was  so  terrible  that  from  this  moment  all  hope  of 
saving  Northern  Kent  seems  to  have  been  abandoned,  and 
it  was  only  on  its  southern  shore  that  the  Britons  held  their 
ground.  Ten  years  later,  in  475,  the  long  contest  was  over, 
and  with  the  fall  of  Lymne,  whose  broken  walls  look  from 
the  slope  to  which  they  cling  over  the  great  flat  of  Rom- 
ney  Marsh,  the  work  of  the  first  English  conqueror  was 
done. 

The  warriors  of  Hengesthad  been  drawn  from  the  Jutes, 
the  smallest  of  the  three  tribes  who  were  to  blend  in  the 
English  people.  But  the  greed  v>f  plunder  now  told  on  the 
great  tribe  which  stretched  from  the  Elbe  to  the  Rhine, 
and  in  477  Saxon  invaders  were  seen  pushing  slowly 
along  the  strip  of  land  which  lay  westward  of  Kent  between 
the  weald  and  the  sea.  Nowhere  has  the  physical  aspect 
of  the  country  more  utterly  changed.     A  vast  sheet  of 


32  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

scrub,  woodland,  and  waste  which  then  bore  the  name  of 
the  Andredsweald  stretched  for  more  than  a  hundred  miles 
from  the  borders  of  Kent  to  the  Hampshire  Downs,  ex- 
tending northward  almost  to  the  Thames  and  leaving  only 
a  thin  strip  of  coast  which  now  bears  the  name  of  Sussex 
between  its  southern  edge  and  the  sea.  This  coast  was 
guarded  by  a  fortress  which  occupied  the  spot  now  called 
Pevensey,  the  future  landing-place  of  the  Norman  Con- 
queror; and  the  fall  of  this  fortress  of  Anderida  in  491  es- 
tablished the  kingdom  of  the  South- Saxons.  "  ^lle  and 
Cissa  beset  Anderida,"  so  ran  the  pitiless  record  of  the 
conquerors,  "  and  slew  all  that  were  therein,  nor  was  there 
afterward  one  Briton  left."  But  Hengest  and  -(file's 
men  had  touched  hardly  more  than  the  coast,  and  the  true 
conquest  of  Southern  Britain  was  reserved  for  a  fresh  band 
of  Saxons,  a  tribe  known  as  the  Gewissas,  who  landed  un- 
der Cerdic  and  Cynric  on  the  shores  of  the  Southampton 
Water,  and  pushed  in  495  to  the  great  downs  or  Gwent 
where  Winchester  offered  so  rich  a  prize.  Nowhere  was 
the  strife  fiercer  than  here;  and  it  was  not  till  519  that  a 
decisive  victory  at  Charford  ended  the  struggle  for  the 
"  Gwent"  and  set  the  crown  of  the  West-Saxons  on  the 
head  of  Cerdic.  But  the  forest-belt  around  it  checked  any 
further  advance ;  and  only  a  year  after  Charford  the  Brit- 
ons rallied  under  a  new  leader,  Arthur,  and  threw  back 
the  invaders  as  they  pressed  westward  through  the  Dorset- 
shire woodlands  in  a  great  overthrow  at  Badbury  or  Mount 
Badon.  The  defeat  was  followed  by  a  long  pause  in  the 
Saxon  advance  from  the  southern  coast,  but  while  the  Ge- 
wissas rested  a  series  of  victories  whose  history  is  lost  was 
giving  to  men  of  the  same  Saxon  tribe  the  coast  district 
north  of  the  mouth  of  the  Thames.  It  is  probable  however 
that  the  strength  of  Camulodunum,  the  predecessor  of  our 
modern  Colchester,  made  the  progress  of  these  assailants 
a  slow  and  doubtful  one ;  and  even  when  its  reduction  en- 
abled the  East- Saxons  to  occupy  the  territory  to  which  they 
have  given  their  name  of  Essex  a  line  of  woodland  which 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  33 

has  left  its  traces  in  Epping  and  Hainault  Forests  checked 
their  further  advance  into  the  island. 

Though  seventy  years  had  passed  since  the  victorj^  of 
Aylesford  only  the  outskirts  of  Britain  were  won.  The 
invaders  were  masters  as  yet  but  of  Kent,  Sussex,  Hamp- 
shire, and  Essex.  From  London  to  St.  David's  Head,  from 
the  Andredsweald  to  the  Firth  of  Forth  the  country  still 
remained  unconquered :  and  there  was  little  in  the  years 
which  followed  Arthur's  triumph  to  herald  that  onset  of 
the  invaders  which  was  soon  to  make  Britain  England. 
Till  now  its  assailants  had  been  drawn  from  two  only  of 
the  three  tribes  whom  we  saw  dwelling  by  the  northern 
sea,  from  the  Saxons  and  the  Jutes.  But  the  main  work 
of  conquest  was  to  be  done  by  the  third,  by  the  tribe  which 
bore  that  name  of  Engle  or  Englishmen  which  was  to  ab- 
sorb that  of  Saxon  or  Jute  and  to  stamp  itself  on  the  people 
which  sprang  from  the  union  of  the  conquerors  as  on  the 
land  that  they  won.  The  Engle  had  probabl}'  been  settling 
for  years  along  the  coast  of  Northumbria  and  in  the  great 
district  which  was  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  Britain  by  the 
Wash  and  the  Fens,  the  later  East-Anglia.  But  it  was 
not  till  the  moment  we  have  reached  that  the  line  of  de- 
fences which  had  hitherto  held  the  invaders  at  bay  was 
turned  by  their  appearance  in  the  Humber  and  the  Trent. 
This  great  river-line  led  like  a  highway  into  the  heart  of 
Britain;  and  civil  strife  seems  to  have  broken  the  strength 
of  British  resistance.  But  of  the  incidents  of  this  final 
struggle  we  know  nothing.  One  part  of  the  English  force 
marched  from  the  Humber  over  the  Yorkshire  wolds  to 
found  what  was  called  the  kingdom  of  the  Deirans.  Un- 
der the  Empire  political  power  had  centred  in  the  district 
between  the  Humber  and  the  Roman  wall;  York  was  the 
capital  of  Roman  Britain ;  villas  of  rich  landowners  studded 
the  valley  of  the  Ouse ;  and  the  bulk  of  the  garrison  main- 
tained in  the  island  lay  camped  along  its  northern  border. 
But  no  record  tells  us  how  Yorkshire  was  won,  or  how  the 
Engle  made  themselves  masters  of  the  uplands  about  Lin- 
VoL.  L— 3 


34  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 


coin.  It  is  only  by  their  later  settlements  that  we  follow 
their  march  into  the  heart  of  Britain.  Seizing  the  valley 
of  the  Don  and  whatever  breaks  there  were  in  the  wood- 
land that  then  filled  the  space  between  the  Humber  and  the 
Trent,  the  Englo  followed  the  curve  of  the  latter  river,  and 
struck  along  the  line  of  its  tributary  the  Soar.  Here  round 
the  Roman  RatsB,  the  predecessor  of  our  Leicester,  settled 
a  tribe  known  as  the  Middle-English,  while  a  small  body 
pushed  further  southward,  and  under  the  name  of  "  South- 
Engle"  occupied  the  oolitic  upland  that  forms  our  present 
Northamptonshire.  But  the  mass  of  the  invaders  seem  to 
have  held  to  the  line  of  the  Trent  and  to  have  pushed  west- 
ward to  its  head-waters.  Repton,  Lichfield,  and  Tam- 
worth  mark  the  country  of  these  western  Englishmen, 
whose  older  name  was  soon  lost  in  that  of  Mercians,  or 
Men  of  the  March.  Their  settlement  was  in  fact  a  new 
march  or  borderland  between  conqueror  and  conquered; 
for  here  the  impenetrable  fastness  of  the  Peak,  the  mass 
of  Cannock  Chase,  and  the  broken  country  of  Staffordshire 
enabled  the  Briton  to  make  a  fresh  and  desperate  stand. 

It  was  probably  this  conquest  of  Mid-Britain  bj'  the 
Engle  that  roused  the  West- Saxons  to  a  new  advance. 
For  thirty  years  they  had  rested  inactive  within  the  limits 
of  the  Gwent,  but  in  562  their  capture  of  the  hill-fort  of 
Old  Sarum  threw  open  the  reaches  of  the  Wiltshire  downs 
and  a  march  of  King  Cuthwulf  on  the  Thames  made  them 
masters  in  571  of  the  districts  which  now  form  Oxfordshire 
and  Berkshire.  Pushing  along  the  upper  valley  of  Avon 
to  a  new  battle  at  Barbury  Hill  they  swooped  at  last  from 
their  uplands  on  the  rich  prey  that  lay  along  the  Severn. 
Gloucester,  Cirencester,  and  Bath,  cities  which  had  leagued 
under  their  British  kings  to  resist  this  onset,  became  in 
577  the  spoil  of  an  English  victory  at  Deorham,  and  the 
line  of  the  great  western  river  lay  open  to  the  arms  of  the 
conquerors.  Once  the  West^^axons  penetrated  to  the  bor- 
ders of  Chester,  and  Uriconinm,  a  town  beside  the  Wrekin 
which  has  been  recently  brought  again  to  light,  went  up 


Chap.  1.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  35 

in  flames.  The  raid  ended  in  a  crushing  defeat  which 
broke  the  West-Saxon  strength,  but  a  British  poet  in 
verses  still  left  to  us  sings  piteoustythe  death-song  of  Uri- 
conium,  "the  white  town  in  the  valley,"  the  town  of  white 
stone  gleaming  among  the  green  woodlands.  The  torch 
of  the  foe  had  left  it  a  heap  of  blackened  ruins  where  the 
singer  wandered  through  halls  he  had  known  in  happier 
days,  the  halls  of  its  chief  Kynd5dan,  "  without  fire,  with- 
out light,  without  song,"  their  stillness  broken  only  by  the 
eagle's  scream,  the  eagle  who  "has  swallowed  fresh  drink, 
heart's  blood  of  Kyndylan  the  fair." 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   ENGLISH   KINGDOMS. 
577—796. 

With  the  victory  of  Deorham  the  conquest  of  the  bulk 
of  Britain  was  complete.  Eastward  of  a  line  which  may 
be  roughly  drawn  along  the  moorlands  of  Northumber- 
land and  Yorkshire  through  Derbyshire  and  the  Forest  of 
Arden  to  the  Lower  Severn,  and  thence  by  Mendip  to  the 
sea,  the  island  had  passed  into  English  hands.  Britain 
had  in  the  main  become  England.  And  within  this  new 
England  a  Teutonic  society  was  settled  on  the  wreck  of 
Rome.  So  far  as  the  conquest  had  yet  gone  it  had  been 
complete.  Not  a  Briton  remained  as  subject  or  slave  on 
English  ground.  Sullenly,  inch  by  inch,  the  beaten  men 
drew  back  from  the  land  which  their  conquerors  had  won ; 
and  eastward  of  the  border  line  which  the  English  sword 
had  drawn  all  was  now  purely  English. 

It  is  this  which  distinguishes  the  conquest  of  Britain 
from  that  of  the  other  provinces  of  Rome.  The  conquest 
of  Gaul  by  the  Franks  or  that  of  Italy  by  the  Lombards 
proved  little  more  than  a  forcible  settlement  of  the  one  or 
the  other  among  tributary  subjects  who  were  destined  in 
a  long  course  of  ages  to  absorb  their  conquerors.  French 
is  the  tongue,  not  of  the  Frank,  but  of  the  Gaul  whom  he 
overcame ;  and  the  fair  hair  of  the  Lombard  is  all  but  un- 
known in  Lombardy.  But  the  English  conquest  of  Brit- 
ain up  to  the  point  which  we  have  reached  was  a  sheer 
dispossession  of  the  people  whom  the  English  conquered. 
It  was  not  that  Englishmen,  fxcrce  and  cruel  as  at  times 
they  seem  to  have  been,  were  more  fierce  or  more  cruel 
than  other  Germans  who  attacked  the  Empire;  nor  have 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  37 

we  any  ground  for  saying  that  they,  unlike  the  Burgun- 
dian  or  the  Frank,  were  utterly  strange  to  the  Roman 
civilization.  Saxon  mercenaries  are  found  as  well  as 
Frank  mercenaries  in  the  pay  of  Rome ;  and  the  presence 
of  Saxon  vessels  in  the  Channel  for  a  century  before  the 
descent  on  Britain  must  have  familiarized  its  invaders 
with  what  civilization  was  to  be  found  in  the  Imperial 
provinces  of  the  West.  What  really  made  the  difference 
between  the  fate  of  Britain  and  that  of  the  rest  of  the  Ro- 
man world  was  the  stubborn  courage  of  the  British  them- 
selves. In  all  the  world-wide  struggle  between  Rome  and 
the  German  peoples  no  land  was  so  stubbornly  fought  for 
or  so  hardly  won.  In  Gaul  no  native  resistance  met 
Frank  or  Visigoth  save  from  the  brave  peasants  of  Brit- 
anny  and  Auvergne.  No  popular  revolt  broke  out  against 
the  rule  of  Odoacer  or  Theodoric  in  Italy.  But  in  Britain 
the  invader  was  met  by  a  courage  almost  equal  to  his  own. 
Instead  of  quartering  themselves  quietly,  like  their  fel- 
lows abroad,  on  subjects  who  were  glad  to  buy  peace  by 
obedience  and  tribute,  the  English  had  to  make  every  inch 
of  Britain  their  own  by  hard  fighting. 

This  stubborn  resistance  was  backed  too  by  natural  ob- 
stacles of  the  gravest  kind.  Everywhere  in  the  Roman 
world  the  work  of  the  conquerors  was  aided  by  the  civili- 
zation of  Rome.  Vandal  or  Frank  marched  along  Roman 
highways  over  ground  cleared  by  the  Roman  axe  and 
crossed  river  or  ravine  on  the  Roman  bridge.  It  was  so 
doubtless  with  the  English  conquerors  of  Britain.  But 
though  Britain  had  long  been  Roman,  her  distance  from 
the  seat  of  empire  left  her  less  Romanized  than  any  other 
province  of  the  West.  Socially  the  Roman  civilization 
had  made  little  impression  on  any  but  the  townsfolk,  and 
the  material  civilization  of  the  island  was  yet  more  back- 
ward than  its  social.  Its  natural  defences  threw  obstacles 
in  its  invaders'  way.  In  the  forest  belts  which  stretched 
over  vast  spaces  of  country  they  found  barriers  which  in 
all  cases  checked  their  advance  and  in  some  cases  finally 


"8  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  1. 

stopped  it.  The  Keutishmen  and  the  South  Saxons  were 
brought  utterly  to  a  standstill  by  the  Andredsweald.  The 
East-Saxons  could  never  pierce  the  woods  of  their  western 
border.  The  Fens  proved  impassable  to  the  Northfolk 
and  the  Southfolk  of  East-Anglia.  It  was  only  after  a 
long  and  terrible  struggle  that  the  West-Saxons  could 
hew  their  way  through  the  forests  which  sheltered  the 
"  Gwent"  of  the  southern  coast.  Their  attempt  to  break 
out  of  the  circle  of  woodland  which  girt  in  the  downs  was 
in  fact  fruitless  for  thirty  years ;  and  in  the  height  of  their 
later  power  they  were  thrown  back  from  the  forests  of 
Cheshire. 

It  is  only  by  realizing  in  this  way  the  physical  as  well 
as  the  moral  circumstances  of  Britain  that  Ave  can  under- 
stand the  character  of  its  earlier  conquest.  Field  by  field, 
town  b}'  town,  forest  by  forest,  the  land  was  won.  And 
as  each  bit  of  ground  was  torn  away  by  the  stranger,  the 
Briton  sullenly  withdrew  from  it  only  to  turn  doggedly 
and  fight  for  the  next.  There  is  no  need  to  believe  that 
the  clearing  of  the  land  meant  so  impossible  a  thing  as  the 
general  slaughter  of  the  men  who  held  it.  Slaughter 
there  was,  no  doubt,  on  the  battle-field  or  in  towns  like 
Anderida  whose  resistance  woke  wrath  in  their  besiegers. 
But  for  the  most  part  the  Britons  were  not  slaughtered; 
they  were  defeated  and  drew  back.  Such  a  withdrawal 
was  only  made  possible  by  the  slowness  of  the  conquest. 
For  it  is  not  only  the  stoutness  of  its  defence  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  conquest  of  Britain  from  that  of  the  other 
provinces  of  the  Empire,  but  the  weakness  of  attack.  As 
the  resistance  of  the  Britons  was  greater  than  that  of  the 
other  provincials  of  Rome  so  the  forces  of  their  assailants 
^ere  less.  Attack  by  sea  was  less  easy  than  attack  by 
iand,  and  the  numbers  who  were  brought  across  by  the 
boats  of  Hengest  or  Cerdic  cannot  have  rivalled  those 
which  followed  Theodoric  or  Chlodewig  across  the  Alps  or 
the  Rhine.  Landing  in  small  parties,  and  but  gradually 
reinforced  by  after-comers,  lihe  English   invaders  could 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  39 


only  slowly  and  fitfully  push  the  Britons  back.  The  ab- 
sence of  any  joint  action  among  the  assailants  told  in  the 
same  way.  Though  all  spoke  the  same  language  and  used 
the  same  laws,  they  had  no  such  bond  of  political  union 
as  the  Franks ;  and  though  all  were  bent  on  winning  the 
same  land,  ea^h  band  and  each  leader  preferred  their  own 
separate  course  of  action  to  any  collective  enterprise. 

Under  such  conditions  the  overrunning  of  Britain  could 
not  fail  to  be  a  very  different  matter  from  the  rapid  and 
easy  overrunning  of  such  countries  as  Gaul.  How  slow 
the  work  of  English  conquest  was  may  be  seen  from  the 
fact  that  it  took  nearl}^  thirty  years  to  win  Kent  alone  and 
sixty  to  complete  the  conquest  of  Southern  Britain,  and 
that  the  conquest  of  the  bulk  of  the  island  was  only 
wrought  out  after  two  centuries  of  bitter  warfare.  But  it 
was  just  through  the  length  of  the  struggle  that  of  all  the 
German  conquests  this  proved  the  most  thorough  and 
complete.  So  far  as  the  English  sword  in  these  earlier 
daj's  had  reached,  Britain  had  become  England,  a  land, 
that  is,  not  of  Britons  but  of  Englishmen.  Even  if  a  few 
of  the  vanquished  people  lingered  as  slaves  round  the 
homesteads  of  their  English  conquerors,  or  a  few  of  their 
household  words  mingled  with  the  English  tongue,  doubt- 
ful exceptions  such  as  these  leave  the  main  facts  un- 
touched. The  keynote  of  the  conquest  was  firmly  struck. 
When  the  English  invasion  was  stayed  for  a  while  by  the 
civil  wars  of  the  invaders,  the  Briton  had  disappeared 
from  the  greater  part  of  the  land  which  had  been  his  own ; 
and  the  tongue,  the  religion,  the  laws  of  his  English  con- 
querors reigned  without  a  break  from  Essex  to  Stafford- 
shire and  from  the  British  Channel  to  the  Firth  of  Forth. 

For  the  driving  out  of  the  Briton  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
but  a  prelude  to  the  settlement  of  his  conqueror.  What 
strikes  us  at  once  in  the  new  England  is  this,  that  it  was 
the  one  purely  German  nation  that  rose  upon  the  v/reck 
of  Rome.  In  other  lands,  in  Spain  or  Gaul  or  Italy, 
though  they  were  equally  conquered  by  German  peoples, 


40  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

religion,  social  life,  administrative  order,  still  remained 
Roman.  Britain  was  almost  the  only  province  of  the  Em- 
pire where  Rome  died  into  a  vague  tradition  of  the  past. 
The  whole  organization  of  government  and  society  disap- 
peared with  the  people  who  used  it.  Roman  roads  indeed 
still  led  to  desolate  cities.  Roman  camps  still  crowned 
hill  and  do^vn.  The  old  divisions  of  the  land  remained  to 
furnish  bounds  of  field  and  farm  for  the  new  settlers. 
The  Roman  church,  the  Roman  country-house,  was  left 
standing,  though  reft  of  priest  and  lord.  But  Rome  was 
gone.  The  mosaics,  the  coins  which  we  dig  up  in  our 
fields  are  no  relics  of  our  English  fathers,  but  of  a  world 
which  our  fathers'  swords  swept  utterly  away.  Its  law, 
its  literature,  its  manners,  its  faith,  went  with  it.  Noth- 
ing was  a  stronger  proof  of  the  completeness  of  this  de- 
struction of  all  Roman  life  than  the  religious  change 
which  passed  over  the  land.  Alone  among  the  German 
assailants  of  Rome  the  English  stood  aloof  from  the  faith 
of  the  Empire  they  helped  to  overthrow.  The  new  Eng- 
land was  a  heathen  country.  Homestead  and  boundary, 
the  very  days  of  the  week,  bore  the  names  of  new  gods 
who  displaced  Christ. 

As  we  stand  amid  the  ruins  of  town  or  country-house 
which  recall  to  us  the  wealth  and  culture  of  Roman  Brit- 
ain, it  is  hard  to  believe  that  a  conquest  which  left  them 
heaps  of  crumbling  stoneb  was  other  than  a  curse  to  the 
land  over  which  it  passed.  But  if  the  new  England 
which  sprang  from  the  wreck  of  Britain  seemed  for  the 
moment  a  waste  from  which  the  arts,  the  letters,  the  re- 
fmement  of  the  world  had  fled  hopelessly  away,  it  con- 
tained within  itself  germs  of  a  nobler  life  than  that  which 
had  been  destroyed.  The  base  of  Roman  society  here  as 
everywhere  throughout  the  Roman  world  was  the  slave, 
the  peasant  who  had  been  crushed  by  tyranny,  political 
and  social,  into  serfdom.  The  base  of  the  new  English 
society  was  the  freeman  whom  we  have  seen  tilling,  judg- 
ing, or  fighting  for  himself  by  the  Northern  Sea.     How- 


ChAx-.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  41 

ever  roughly  he  dealt  with  the  material  civilization  of 
Britain  while  the  struggle  went  on,  it  was  impossible  that 
such  a  man  could  be  a  mere  destroyer.  War  in  fact  was 
no  sooner  over  than  the  warrior  settled  down  into  the 
farmer,  and  the  home  of  the  ceorl  rose  beside  the  heap  of 
goblm-haunted  stones  that  marked  the  site  of  the  villa  he 
bad  burned.  The  settlement  of  the  English  in  the  con- 
quered land  was  nothing  less  than  an  absolute  transfer  of 
English  society  in  its  completest  form  to  the  soil  of  Brit- 
ain. The  slowness  of  their  advance,  the  small  numbers 
of  each  separate  band  in  its  descent  upon  the  coast,  made 
it  possible  for  the  invaders  to  bring  with  them,  or  to  call 
to  them  when  their  work  was  done,  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren, the  last  and  slave,  even  the  cattle  they  had  left  be- 
hind them.  The  first  wave  of  conquest  was  but  the  prel- 
ude to  the  gradual  migration  of  a  whole  people.  It  was 
England  which  settled  down  on  British  soil,  England  with 
its  own  language,  its  own  laws,  its  complete  social  fabric, 
its  system  of  village  life  and  village  culture,  its  township 
and  its  hundred,  its  principle  of  kinship,  its  principle  of 
representation.  It  was  not  as  mere  pirates  or  stray  war- 
bands,  but  as  peoples  already  made,  and  fitted  by  a  com- 
mon temper  and  common  customs  to  draw  together  into 
our  English  nation  in  the  days  to  come,  that  our  fathers 
left  their  German  home-land  for  the  land  in  which  we 
live.  Their  social  and  political  organization  remained 
radically  unchanged.  In  each  of  the  little  kingdoms 
which  rose  on  the  wreck  of  Britain  the  host  camped  on 
the  land  it  had  won,  and  the  divisions  of  the  host  supplied 
here  as  in  its  older  home  the  rough  groundwork  of  local 
distribution.  The  land  occupied  by  the  hundred  warriors 
who  formed  the  unit  of  military  organization  became  per- 
haps the  local  hundred ;  but  it  is  needless  to  attach  any 
notion  of  precise  uniformity,  either  in  the  number  of  set- 
tlers or  in  the  area  of  their  settlement,  to  such  a  process 
as  this,  any  more  than  to  the  army  organization  which 
the  process  of  distribution    reflected.     From    the   large 


42  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

amount  of  public  land  which  we  find  existing  afterward 
it  has  been  conjectured  with  some  probability  that  the 
number  of  settlers  was  far  too  small  to  occupy  the  whole 
of  the  country  at  their  disposal,  and  this  unoccupied 
ground  became  "folk-land,"  the  common  property  of  the 
tribe  as  at  a  later  time  of  the  nation.  What  ground  was 
actually  occupied  ma}'-  have  been  assigned  to  each  group 
and  each  family  in  the  group  by  lot,  and  eorl  and  ceorl 
gathei-ed  round  them  their  Iset  and  slL,ve  as  in  their  home- 
land by  the  Rhine  or  the  Elbe.  And  with  the  English 
people  passed  to  the  shores  of  Britain  all  that  was  to  make 
Englishmen  what  they  are.  For  distant  and  dim  as  their 
life  in  that  older  England  may  have  seemed  to  us,  the 
whole  after-life  of  Englishmen  was  there.  In  its  village- 
moots  lay  our  Parliament;  iu  the  gieeman  of  its  village- 
feasts  our  Chaucer  and  our  Shakespeare ;  in  the  pirate-bark 
stealing  from  creek  to  creek  our  Drakes  and  our  Nelsons. 
Even  the  national  temper  was  fully  formed.  Civilization, 
letters,  science,  religion  itself,  have  done  little  to  change 
the  inner  mood  of  Englishmen.  That  love  of  venture  and 
of  toil,  of  the  sea  and  the  fight,  that  trust  in  manhood  and 
the  might  of  man,  that  silent  awe  of  the  mysteries  of  life 
and  death  which  lay  deep  in  English  souls  then  as  now, 
passed  with  Englishmen  to  the  land  which  Englishmen 
had  won. 

But  though  English  society  passed  thus  in  its  complete- 
ness to  the  soil  of  Britain  its  primitive  organization  was 
affected  in  more  ways  than  one  by  the  transfer.  In  the 
first  place  conquest  begat  the  King.  It  seems  probable 
that  the  English  had  hitherto  known  nothing  of  Kings  in 
their  own  fatherland,  where  each  tribe  was  satisfied  in 
peace  time  with  the  customary  government  of  village- 
reeve  and  hundred-reeve  and  ealdorman,  while  it  gathered 
at  fighting  times  under  war  leaders  whom  it  chose  for 
each  campaign.  But  in  the  long  and  obstinate  warfare 
which  they  waged  against  the  Britons  it  was  needful  to 
find  a  common  leader  whom  tho  various  tribes  engaged  in 


CflAP.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  43 

conquests  such  as  those  of  Wessex  or  Mercia  might  follow ; 
and  the  ceaseless  character  of  a  struggle  which  left  few 
intervals  of  rest  or  peace  raised  these  leaders  into  a 
higher  position  than  that  of  temporary  chieftains.  It  was 
no  doubt  from  this  cause  that  we  find  Hengest  and  his  son 
^SG  raised  to  the  kingdom  in  Kent,  or  ^lle  in  Sussex, 
or  Cerdic  and  Cynric  among  the  West  Saxons.  The  asso- 
ciation of  son  with  father  in  this  new  kingship  marked 
the  hereditary  character  which  distinguished  it  from  the 
temporary  office  of  an  ealdorman.  The  change  was  un- 
doubtedly a  great  one,  but  it  was  less  than  the  modern 
conception  of  kingship  would  lead  us  to  imagine.  Hered- 
itary as  the  succession  was  within  a  single  house,  each 
successive  King  was  still  the  free  choice  of  his  people, 
and  for  centuries  to  come  it  was  held  within  a  people's 
right  to  pass  over  a  claimant  too  weak  or  too  wicked  for 
the  throne.  In  war  indeed  the  King  was  supreme.  But 
in  peace  his  power  was  narrowly  bounded  by  the  customs 
of  his  people  and  the  rede  of  his  wise  men.  Justice  was 
not  as  yet  the  King's  justice,  it  was  the  justice  of  village 
and  hundred  and  folk  in  town-moot  and  hundred-moot 
and  folk-moot.  It  was  only  with  the  assent  of  the  wise 
men  that  the  King  could  make  laws  and  declare  war  and 
assign  public  lands  and  name  public  officers.  Above  all, 
should  his  will  be  to  breakthrough  the  free  customs  of  his 
people,  he  was  without  the  means  of  putting  his  will  into 
action,  for  the  one  force  he  could  call  on  was  the  host, 
and  the  host  was  the  people  itself  in  arms. 

With  the  new  English  King  rose  a  new  order  of  Eng- 
lish nobles.  The  social  distinction  of  the  eorl  was  founded 
on  the  peculiar  purity  of  his  blood,  on  his  long  descent 
from  the  original  settler  around  whom  township  and 
thorpe  grew  up.  A  new  distinction  was  now  to  be  found 
in  service  done  to  the  King.  From  the  earliest  times  of 
German  society  it  had  been  the  wont  of  young  men  greedy 
of  honor  or  seeking  training  in  arms  to  bind  themselves 
as  "  comrades"  to  king  or  chief.     The  leader  whom  they 


44:  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  I. 

JB -■ ■ ■■  "  '       ■       » 

chose  gave  them  horses,  arms,  a  seat  in  his  mead  hall, 
and  gifts  from  his  hoard.  The  "  comrade"  on  the  other 
hand — the  gesith  or  thegn,  as  he  was  called — bound  him- 
self to  follow  and  fight  for  his  lord.  The  principle  of  per- 
sonal dependence  as  distinguished  from  the  warrior's 
general  duty  to  the  folk  at  large  was  embodied  in  the 
thegn.  "Chieftains  fight  for  victory,"  says  Tacitus; 
"comrades  for  their  chieftain."  When  one  of  Beowulf's 
"  comrades"  saw  his  lord  hard  bested  "  he  minded  him  of 
the  homestead  he  had  given  him,  of  the  folk-right  he  gave 
him  as  his  father  had  it;  nor  might  he  hold  back  then." 
Snatching  up  sword  and  shield  he  called  on  his  fellow- 
thegns  to  follow  him  to  the  fight.  "  I  mind  me  of  the 
day,"  he  cried,  "when  we  drank  the  mead,  the  day  we 
gave  pledge  to  our  lord  in  the  beer  hall  as  he  gave  us  these 
rings,  our  pledge  that  we  would  pay  him  back  our  war- 
gear,  our  helms  and  our  hard  swords,  if  need  befel  him. 
Unmeet  is  it,  methinks,  that  we  should  bear  back  our 
shields  to  our  home  unless  we  guard  our  lord's  life."  The 
larger  the  band  of  such  "  comrades, "  the  more  power  and 
repute  it  gave  their  lord.  It  was  from  among  the  chiefs 
whose  war-band  was  strongest  that  the  leaders  of  the  host 
were  commonly  chosen;  and  as  these  leaders  grew  into 
kings,  the  number  of  their  thegns  naturally  increased. 
The  rank  of  the  "  comrades"  too  rose  with  the  rise  of  their 
lord.  The  king's  thegns  were  his  body-guard,  the  one 
force  ever  ready  to  carry  out  his  will.  They  were  his 
nearest  and  most  constant  counsellors.  As  the  gathering 
of  petty  tribes  into  larger  kingdoms  swelled  the  number 
of  eorls  in  each  realm  and  in  a  corresponding  degree 
diminished  their  social  importance,  it  raised  in  equal 
measure  the  rank  of  the  king's  thegns.  A  post  among 
them  was  soon  coveted  and  won  by  the  greatest  and  no- 
blest in  the  land.  Their  service  was  rewarded  by  exemp- 
tion from  the  general  jurisdiction  of  hundred-court  or 
shire-court,  for  it  was  part  of  a  thegn's  meed  for  his  ser- 
vice that  he  should  be  judged^only  by  the  lord  he  served 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  45 


Other  meed  was  found  in  grants  of  public  land  which 
made  them  a  local  nobility,  no  longer  bound  to  actual  ser- 
vice in  the  king's  household  or  the  king's  war-band,  but 
still  bound  to  him  by  personal  ties  of  allegiance  far  closer 
than  those  which  bound  an  eorl  to  the  chosen  war-leader 
of  the  tribe.  In  a  word,  thegnhood  contained  within  itself 
the  germ  of  that  later  feudalism  which  was  to  battle  so 
fiercely  with  the  Teutonic  freedom  out  of  which  it  grew. 

But  the  strife  between  the  conquering  tribes  which  at 
once  followed  on  their  conquest  of  Britain  was  to  bring 
about  changes  even  more  momentous  in  the  development 
of  the  English  people.  While  Jute  and  Saxon  and  Engle 
were  making  themselves  masters  of  central  and  southern 
Britain,  the  English  who  had  landed  on  its  northernmost 
shores  had  been  slowly  winning  for  themselves  the  coast 
district  between  the  Forth  and  the  Tyne  which  bore  the 
name  of  Bernicia.  Their  progress  seems  to  have  been 
small  till  they  were  gathered  into  a  kingdom  in  547  by 
Ida  the  "Flame-bearer,"  who  found  a  site  for  his  King's 
town  on  the  impregnable  rock  of  Bamborough ;  nor  was 
it  till  the  reign  of  his  fourth  son  -<3j]thelric  that  they  gained 
full  mastery  over  the  Britons  along  their  western  border. 
But  once  masters  of  the  Britons  the  Bernician  Englishmen 
turned  to  conquer  their  English  neighbors  to  the  south, 
the  men  of  Deira,  whose  first  King  ^lla  was  now  sinking 
to  the  grave.  The  struggle  filled  the  foreign  markets 
with  English  slaves,  and  one  of  the  most  memorable 
stories  in  our  history  shows  us  a  group  of  such  captives 
as  they  stood  in  the  market-place  of  Rome,  it  may  be  in 
the  great  Forum  of  Trajan  which  still  in  its  deca}^  recalled 
the  glories  of  the  Imperial  City.  Their  white  bodies, 
their  fair  faces,  their  golden  hair  was  noted  by  a  deacon 
who  passed  by.  "From  what  country  do  these  slaves 
come?"  Gregory  asked  the  trader  who  brought  them. 
The  slave-dealer  answered,  "They  are  English,"  or  as  the 
word  ran  in  the  Latin  form  it  would  bear  at  Rome,  "  they 
are  Angles."     The  deacon's  pity  veiled  itself  in  poetic 


4G  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 


humor.  "Not  Angles  but  Angels,"  he  said,  "with  faces 
so  augel-like !  From  what  country  come  they?"  "They 
come,"  said  the  merchant,  "  from  Deira."  "  De  ird!  "  was 
the  untranslatable  word-play  of  the  vivacious  Roman — 
"  aye,  plucked  from  God's  ire  and  called  to  Christ's  mercy  i 
And  what  is  the  name  of  their  king?"  They  told  him 
"-dEUa,"  and  Gregory  seized  on  the  word  as  of  good  omen. 
"Alleluia  shall  be  sung  in  Ella's  land,"  he  said,  and 
passed  on,  musing  how  the  angel-faces  should  be  brought 
to  sing  it. 

While  Gregory  was  thus  playing  with  -Ella's  name  the 
old  king  passed  away,  and  with  his  death  in  589  the  resist- 
ance of  his  kingdom  seems  to  have  ceased.  His  house  fled 
over  the  western  border  to  find  refuge  among  the  Welsh, 
and  ^^thelric  of  Bernicia  entered  Deira  in  triumph.  A 
new  age  of  our  history  opens  in  this  submission  of  one 
English  people  to  another.  When  the  two  kingdoms  were 
united  under  a  common  lord  the  period  of  national  forma- 
tion began.  If  a  new  England  sprang  out  of  the  mass  of 
English  states  which  covered  Britain  after  its  conquest, 
we  owe  it  to  the  gradual  submission  of  the  smaller  peoples 
to  the  supremacy  of  a  common  political  head.  The  differ- 
ence in  power  between  state  and  state  which  inevitably 
led  to  this  process  of  union  was  due  to  the  character  which 
the  conquest  of  Britain  was  now  assuming.  Up  to  this 
time  all  the  kingdoms  which  had  been  established  by  the 
invaders  had  stood  in  the  main  on  a  footing  of  equality. 
All  had  taken  an  independent  share  in  the  work  of  con- 
quest. Though  the  oneness  of  a  common  blood  and  a 
common  speech  was  recognized  by  all  we  find  no  traces  of 
any  common  action  or  common  rule.  Even  in  the  two 
groups  of  kingdoms,  the  five  English  and  the  five  Saxon 
kingdoms,  which  occupied  Britain  south  of  the  Humber, 
the  relations  of  each  member  of  the  group  to  its  fellows 
seem  to  have  been  merely  local.  It  was  only  locally  that 
East  and  West  and  South  and  North  English  were  groupoo 
round  the  Middle  English  of^Leicester,  or  East  and  Weai 


CHA.P.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071,  4'i 


and  South  and  North  Saxons  round  the  Middle  Saxons 
about  London.  In  neither  instance  do  we  find  any  real 
trace  of  a  confederacy,  or  of  the  rule  of  one  member  of  the 
group  over  the  others;  while  north  of  the  Humber  the 
feeling  between  the  Englishmen  of  Yorkshire  and  the 
Englishmen  who  had  settled  toward  the  Firth  of  Forth 
was  one  of  hostility  rather  than  of  friendship.  But  this 
age  of  isolation,  of  equality,  of  independence,  had  now 
come  to  an  end.  The  progress  of  the  conquest  had  drawn 
a  sharp  line  between  the  kingdoms  of  the  conquerors. 
The  work  of  half  of  them  was  done.  In  the  south  of  the 
island  not  only  Kent  but  Sussex,  Essex,  and  Middlesex 
were  surrounded  by  English  territory,  and  hindered  by 
that  single  fact  from  all  further  growth.  The  same  fate 
had  befallen  the  East  Engle,  the  South  Engle,  the  Middl© 
and  the  North  Engle.  The  West  Saxons  on  the  other 
hand  and  the  West  Engle,  or  Mercians,  still  remained 
free  to  conquer  and  expand  on  the  south  of  the  Humber, 
as  the  Englishmen  of  Deira  and  Bernicia  remained  free 
to  the  north  of  that  river.  It  was  plain  therefore  that 
from  this  moment  the  growth  of  these  powers  would  throw 
their  fellow-kingdoms  into  the  background,  and  that  with 
an  ever-growing  inequalit}^  of  strength  must  come  a  new 
arrangement  of  political  forces.  The  greater  kingdoms 
would  in  the  end  be  drawn  to  subject  and  absorb  the  lesser 
ones,  and  to  the  war  between  Englishman  and  Briton 
would  be  added  a  struggle  between  Englishman  and  Eng- 
lishman. 

It  was  through  this  struggle  and  the  establishment  of  a 
lordship  on  the  part  of  the  stronger  and  growing  states 
over  their  weaker  and  stationary  fellows  that  the  English 
kingdoms  were  to  make  their  first  step  toward  union  in  a 
single  England.  Such  an  overlordship  seemed  destined 
but  a  few  years  before  to  fall  to  the  lot  of  Wessex.  The 
victories  of  Ceawlin  and  Cuthwulf  left  it  the  largest  of 
the  English  kingdoms.  None  of  its  fellow-states  seemed 
able  to  hold  their  own  against  a  power  which  stretched 


48  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

from  the  Chilterns  to  the  Severn  and  from  the  Channel  to 
the  Ouse.  But  after  its  defeat  in  the  march  upon  Chester 
AVessex  suddenly  broke  down  into  a  chaos  of  Avarring 
tribes ;  and  her  place  was  taken  by  two  powers  whose  rise 
to  greatness  was  as  sudden  as  her  fall.  The  first  of  these 
was  Kent.  The  Kentish  King  JEthelberht  found  himself 
hemmed  in  on  every  side  by  English  territory ;  and  since 
conquest  over  Britons  was  denied  him  he  sought  a  new 
sphere  of  action  in  setting  his  kingdom  at  the  head  of  the 
conquerors  of  the  south.  The  break-up  of  Wessex  no 
doubt  aided  his  attempt ;  but  we  know  little  of  the  causes 
or  events  which  brought  about  his  success.  We  know 
only  that  the  supremacy  of  the  Kentish  King  was  owned 
at  last  by  the  English  peoples  of  the  east  and  centre  of 
Britain.  But  it  was  not  by  her  political  action  that  Kent 
was  in  the  end  to  further  the  creation  of  a  single  England; 
for  the  lordship  which  ^thelberht  built  up  was  doomed  to 
fall  forever  with  his  death,  and  yet  his  death  left  Kent 
the  centre  of  a  national  union  far  wider  as  it  was  far  more 
enduring  than  the  petty  lordship  which  stretched  over 
Eastern  Britain.  Years  had  passed  by  since  Gregory 
pitied  the  English  slaves  in  the  market-place  of  Rome. 
As  Bishop  of  the  Imperial  City  he  at  last  found  himself 
in  a  position  to  carry  out  his  dream  of  winning  Britain  to 
the  faith,  and  an  opening  was  given  him  by  ^thelberht's 
marriage  with  Bercta,  a  daughter  of  the  Frankish  King 
Charibert  of  Paris.  Bercta  like  her  Frankish  kindred 
was  a  Christian;  a  Christian  Bishop  accompanied  her 
from  Gaul;  and  a  ruined  Christian  church,  the  church  of 
St.  Martin  beside  the  royal  city  of  Canterburj^  was  given 
them  for  their  worship.  The  King  himself  remained  true 
to  the  gods  of  his  fathers ;  but  his  marriage  no  doubt  en- 
couraged Gregory  to  send  a  Roman  abbot,  Augustine,  at 
the  head  of  a  band  of  monks  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the 
English  people.  The  missionaries  landed  in  597  in  the 
Isle  of  Thanet,  at  the  spot  where  Hengest  had  landed  more 
than  a  century  before;  and  ^thelberht  received  them  sit* 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  49 


ting  in  the  open  air  on  the  chalk-down  above  Minster 
where  the  eye  nowadays  catches  miles  away  over  the 
marshes  the  dim  tower  of  Canterbury.  The  King  listened 
patiently  to  the  long  sermon  of  Augustine  as  the  interpre- 
ters the  abbot  had  brought  with  him  from  Gaul  rendered 
it  in  the  English  tongue.  "  Your  words  are  fair,"  ^thel- 
berht  replied  at  last  with  English  good  sense,  "  but  they 
are  new  and  of  doubtful  meaning."  For  himself,  he  said, 
he  refused  to  forsake  the  gods  of  his  fathers,  but  with  the 
usual  religious  tolerance  of  the  German  race  he  promised 
shelter  and  protection  to  the  strangers.  The  band  of 
monks  entered  Canterbury  bearing  before  them  a  silver 
cross  with  a  picture  of  Christ,  and  singing  in  concert  the 
strains  of  the  litany  of  their  Church.  "  Turn  from  this 
city,  O  Lord, "  they  sang,  "  Thine  anger  and  wrath,  and 
turn  it  from  Thy  holy  house,  for  we  have  sinned."  And 
then  in  strange  contrast  came  the  jubilant  cry  of  the  older 
Hebrew  worship,  the  cry  which  Gregory  had  wrested  in 
prophetic  earnestness  from  the  name  of  the  Yorkshire  king 
in  the  Roman  market-place,  "  Alleluia !" 

It  was  thus  that  the  spot  which  witnessed  the  landing 
of  Hengest  became  yet  better  known  as  the  landing-place 
of  Augustine.  But  the  second  landing  at  Ebbsfleet  was 
in  no  small  measure  a  reversal  and  undoing  of  the  first. 
"  Strangers  from  Rome"  was  the  title  with  which  the  mis- 
sionaries first  fronted  the  English  king.  The  march  of 
the  monks  as  they  chanted  their  solemn  litany  was  in  one 
sense  a  return  of  the  Roman  legions  who  withdrew  at  the 
trumpet-call  of  Alaric.  It  was  to  the  tongue  and  the 
thought  not  of  Gregory  only  but  of  the  men  whom  his 
Jutish  fathers  had  slaughtered  or  driven  out  that  ^thel- 
berht  listened  in  the  preaching  of  Augustine.  Canter- 
bury, the  earliest  royal  city  of  German  England,  became 
a  centre  of  Latin  influence.  The  Roman  tongue  became 
again  one  of  the  tongues  of  Britain,  the  language  of  its 
worship,  its  correspondence,  its  literature.  But  more  than 
the  tongue  of  Rome  returned  with  Augustine.  Practi- 
VoL.  I.— 4 


60  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  1. 


cally  his  landing  renewed  that  union  with  the  Western 
world  which  the  landing  of  Hengest  had  destroyed.     The 
new  Eugland  was  admitted  into  the  older  commonwealth 
of  natiums.     The  civilization,  art,  letters,  which  had  fled 
before  the  sword  of  the  English  conquerors  returned  with 
the  Christian  faith.     The  great  fabric  of  the  Roman  law 
indeed  never  took  root  in  England,  but  it  is  impossible 
not  to  recognize  the  result  of  the  influence  of  the  Roman 
missionaries  in  the  fact  that  codes  of  the  customary  Eng- 
lish law  began  to  be  put  in  writing  soon  after  their  arrival. 
A  year  passed  before  ^thelberht  yielded  to  the  preach- 
ing of  Augustine.     Biit  from  the  moment  of  his  conver- 
sion the  new  faith  advanced  rapidly  and  the  Kentish  men 
crowded  to  baptism  in  the  train  of  their  king.     The  new 
religion  was  carried  beyond  the  bounds  of  Kent  by  the 
supremacy  which  ^thelberht  wielded  over  the  neiglibor- 
ing  kingdoms.     Sseberht,  King  of  the  East-Saxons,  re- 
ceived a  bishop  sent  from  Kent,  and  suffered  him  to  build 
up  again  a  Christian  church  in  what  was  now  his  subject 
city  of  London,  while  the  East- Anglian  King  Rsedwald 
resolved  to  serve  Christ  and  the  older  gods  together.     But 
while  ^thelberht  was  thus  furnishing  a  future  centre  of 
spiritual  unity  in  Canterbury,  the  see  to  which  Augustine 
was  consecrated,  the  growth  of  Northumbria  was  pointing 
it  out  as  the  coming  political  centre  of  the  new  England. 
In  593,  four  years  before  the  landing  of  the  missionaries 
in  Kent,  ^thelric  was  succeeded  by  his  son  jEthelfrith, 
and  the  new  king  took  up  the  work  of  conquest  with  a 
vigor  greater  than  had  yet  been  shown  by  any  English 
leader.     For  ten  years  he  waged  war  with  the  Britons  of 
Strathclyde,   a  tract  which  stretched  along  his  western 
border  from  Dumbarton  to  Carlisle.     The  contest  ended 
in  a  great  battle  at  Dsegsa's  Stan,  perhaps  Dawston  in 
Liddesdale;  and  ^thelfrith  turned  to  deliver  a  yet  more 
crushing  blow  on  his  southern  border.     British  kingdoms 
still  stretched  from  Clyde-mouth  to  the  mouth  of  Severn-, 
and  had  their  line  remained  tsibroken  the  British  resist- 


z 
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I 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449— 107L  61 


ance  might  yet  have  withstood  the  English  advance.  It 
was  with  a  sound  political  instinct  therefore  that  -lEthelfrith 
marched  in  G07  upon  Chester,  the  point  where  the  king- 
dom of  Cumbria,  a  kingdom  which  stretched  from  the 
Lune  to  the  Dee,  linked  itself  to  the  British  states  of  what 
we  now  call  Wales.  Hard  by  the  city  two  thousand 
monks  were  gathered  in  one  of  those  vast  religious  settle- 
ments which  were  characteristic  of  Celtic  Christianity, 
and  after  a  three  days'  fast  a  crowd  of  these  ascetics  fol- 
lowed the  British  army  to  the  field.  -<^thelfrith  watched 
the  wild  gestures  of  the  monks  as  they  stood  apart  from 
the  host  with  arms  outstretched  in  prayer,  and  bade  his 
men  slay  them  in  the  coming  fight.  "  Bear  they  arms  or 
no,"  said  the  King,  "they  war  against  us  when  they  cry 
against  us  to  their  God,"  and  in  the  surprise  and  rout 
which  followed  the  monks  were  the  first  to  fall. 

With  the  battle  of  Chester  Britain,  as  a  single  political 
body,  ceased  to  exist.  By  their  victory  at  Deorham  the 
West-Saxons  had  cut  off  the  Britons  of  Dorset,  Somerset, 
Devon,  and  Cornwall  from  the  general  body  of  their  race. 
By  ^thelfrith's  victory  at  Chester  and  the  reduction  of 
southern  Lancashire  which  followed  it  what  remained  of 
Britain  was  broken  into  two  several  parts.  From  this 
time  therefore  the  character  of  the  English  conquest  of 
Britain  changes.  The  warfare  of  Briton  and  Englishman 
died  down  into  a  warfare  of  -separate  English  kingdoms 
against  separate  British  kingdoms,  of  Northumbria 
against  Cumbria  and  Strathclyde.  of  Mercia  against 
modern  Wales,  of  Wessex  against  the  tract  of  British 
country  from  Mendip  to  tlie  Land's  End.  But  great  as 
was  the  importance  of  the  battle  of  Chester  to  the  fortunes 
of  Britain,  it  was  of  still  greater  importance  to  the  for- 
tunes of  England  itself.  The  drift  toward  national  unity 
had  already  begun,  but  from  the  moment  of  .^thelfrith's 
victory  this  drift  became  the  main  current  of  our  history. 
Masters:  of  the  larger  and  richer  part  of  the  land,  its  con- 
querors were  no  longer  drawn  greedily  westward  by  the 


52  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

hope  of  plunder;  while  the  severance  of  the  British  king- 
doms took  from  their  enemies  the  pressure  of  a  common 
danger.  The  con(iuests  of  yEthelfrith  left  him  without  a 
rival  in  military  power,  and  he  turned  from  victories  over 
the  Welsh,  as  their  English  foes  called  the  Britons,  to  the 
building  up  of  a  lordship  over  his  own  countrymen. 

The  power  of  ^thelberht  seems  to  have  declined  with 
old  age,  and  though  the  Essex  men  still  owned  his  suprem- 
acy, the  English  tribes  of  Mid-Britain  shook  it  off.  So 
strong,  however,  had  the  instinct  of  union  now  become, 
that  we  hear  nothing  of  any  return  to  their  old  isolation. 
Mercians  and  Southumbrians,  Middle-English  and  South- 
English  now  owned  the  lordship  of  the  East-English  King 
Esedwald.  The  shelter  given  by  Rsedwald  to  iElla's  son 
Eadwine  served  as  a  pretext  for  a  Northumbrian  attack. 
Fortune  however  deserted  .i^thelfrith,  and  a  snatch  of 
northern  song  still  tells  of  the  day  when  the  river  Idle  by 
Retford  saw  his  defeat  and  fall.  But  the  greatness  of 
Northumbria  survived  its  King.  In  617  Eadwine  was 
welcomed  back  by  his  own  men  of  Deira ;  and  his  con- 
quest of  Bernicia  maintained  that  union  of  the  two  realms 
which  the  Bernician  conquest  of  Deira  had  first  brought 
about.  The  greatness  of  Northumbria  now  reached  its 
height.  Within  his  own  dominions,  Eadwine  displayed 
a  genius  for  civil  government  which  shows  how  utterly 
the  mere  age  of  conquest  had  passed  away.  With  him 
began  the  English  proverb  so  often  applied  to  after  kings : 
"  A  woman  with  her  babe  might  walk  scatheless  from  sea 
to  sea  in  Eadwine's  day."  Peaceful  communication  re- 
vived along  the  deserted  highways ;  the  springs  by  the 
roadside  were  marked  with  stakes,  and  a  cup  of  brass  set 
beside  each  for  the  traveller's  refreshment.  Some  faint 
traditions  of  the  Roman  past  may  have  flung  their  glory 
round  this  new  "  Empire  of  the  English ;"  a  royal  standard 
of  purple  and  gold  floated  before  Eadwine  as  he  rode 
through  the  villages;  a  feather  tuft  attached  to  a  spear, 
the  Roman  tufa,  preceded  him.  as  he  walked  through  the 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071  53 

Streets.  The  Northiimbriau  king  became  in  fact  supreme 
over  Britain  as  no  king  of  English  blood  had  been  before. 
Northward  his  frontier  reached  to  the  Firth  of  Forth,  and 
here,  if  we  trust  tradition,  Eadwine  founded  a  city  which 
bore  his  name,  Edinburgh,  Eadwine's  burgh.  To  the 
west  Bis  arms  crushed  the  long  resistance  of  Elmet,  the 
district  about  Leeds ;  he  was  master  of  Chester,  and  the 
fleet  he  equipped  there  subdued  the  isles  of  Anglesea  and 
Man.  South  of  the  Humber  he  was  owned  as  overlord  by 
the  five  English  states  of  Mid-Britain.  The  West-Saxons 
remained  awhile  independent.  But  revolt  and  slaughter 
had  fatally  broken  their  power  when  Eadwine  attacked 
them.  A  story  preserved  by  Bseda  tells  something  of  the 
fierceness  of  the  struggle  which  ended  in  the  subjection  of 
the  south  to  the  overlordship  of  Northumbria.  In  an 
Easter-court  which  he  held  in  his  royal  city  by  the  river 
Derwent,  Eadwine  gave  audience  to  Eumer,  an  envoy  of 
Wessex,  who  brought  a  message  from  its  king.  In  the 
midst  of  the  conference  Eumer  started  to  his  feet,  drew  a 
dagger  from  his  robe,  and  rushed  on  the  Northumbrian 
sovereign.  Lilla,  one  of  the  King's  war-band,  threw 
himself  between  Eadwine  and  his  assassin ;  but  so  furious 
was  the  stroke  that  even  through  Lilla 's  body  the  dagger 
still  reached  its  aim.  The  king,  however,  recovered  from 
his  wound  to  march  on  the  West-Saxons ;  he  slew  or  sub- 
dued all  who  had  conspired  against  him,  and  returned 
victorious  to  his  own  country. 

Kent  had  bound  itself  to  him  by  giving  bim  its  King's 
daughter  as  a  wife,  a  step  which  probably  marked  politi- 
cal subordination ;  and  with  the  Kentish  queen  had  come 
Paulinus,  one  of  Augustine's  followers,  whose  tall  stoop- 
ing form,  slender  aquiline  nose,  and  black  hair  falling 
round  a  thin  worn  face,  were  long  remembered  in  the 
North.  Moved  by  his  queen's  prayers  Eadwine  promised 
to  become  Christian  if  he  returned  successful  from  Wes- 
sex ;  and  the  wise  men  of  Northumbria  gathered  to  de- 
liberate on  the  new  faith  to  which  he  bowed.     To  finer 


54  niSTORY  OF  THE  SNGLISTI  TEOPLE.        [Book  I 


minds  its  charm  \&y  then  as  now  in  the  light  it  threw  on 
the  darkness  which  encompassed  men's  lives,  the  darknesa 
of  the  future  as  of  the  past.  "  So  seems  the  life  of  man, 
O  kin>;,"  burst  forth  an  aged  ealdorman,  "as  a  sparrow's 
flight  through  the  hall  when  a  man  is  sitting  at  meat  in 
winter-tide  with  the  warm  fire  lighted  on  the  hearth  but 
the  chill  rain-storm  without.  The  sparrow  flies  in  at  one 
door  and  tarries  for  a  moment  in  the  light  and  heat  of  the 
hearth-fire,  and  then  flying  forth  from  the  other  vanishes 
into  the  wintr}"  darkness  whence  it  came.  So  tarries  for 
a  moment  the  life  of  man  in  our  sight,  but  what  is  before 
it,  Avhat  after  it,  we  know  not.  If  this  new  teaching  tell 
us  aught  certainly  of  these,  let  us  follow  it."  Coarser 
argument  told  on  the  crovv^d.  "  None  of  your  people,  Ead- 
wine,  have  worshipped  the  gods  more  busily  than  I,"  said 
Coifi  the  priest,  "  yet  there  are  many  more  favored  and 
more  fortunate.  Were  these  gods  good  for  anything  they 
would  help  their  worshippers."  Then  leaping  on  horse- 
back, he  hurled  his  spear  into  the  sacred  temple  at  God- 
manham,  and  with  the  rest  of  the  Witan  embraced  the 
religion  of  the  king. 

But  the  faith  of  Woden  and  Thunder  was  not  to  fall 
without  a  struggle.  Even  in  Kent  a  reaction  against  the 
new  creed  began  with  the  death  of  ^thelberht.  The  young 
Kings  of  the  East-Saxons  burst  into  the  church  where  the 
Bishop  of  London  was  administering  the  Eucharist  to  the 
people,  crying,  "  Give  us  that  white  bread  you  gave  to  our 
father  Saba,"  and  on  the  bishop's  refusal  drove  him  from 
their  realm.  This  earlier  tide  of  reaction  was  checked  by 
Eadwine's  conversion;  but  Mercia,  which  had  as  yet 
owned  the  supremacy  of  Northumbria,  sprang  into  a  sud- 
den greatness  as  the  champion  of  the  heathen  gods.  Its 
King,  Penda,  saw  in  the  rally  of  the  old  religion  a  chance 
of  winning  back  his  people's  freedom  and  giving  it  the 
lead  among  the  tribes  about  it.  Originally  mere  settlers 
along  the  Upper  Trent,  the  position  of  the  Mercians  on 
the  Welsh  border  invited  them  to  widen  tlwir  possessions 


Chap.  2.]  EAHLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  55 


by  conquest  while  the  rest  of  their  Anglian  neighbors  were 
shut  off  from  any  chance  of  expansion.  Their  fights  along 
the  frontier  too  kept  their  warlike  energy  at  its  height, 
Penda  must  have  alread}'  asserted  his  superiority  over  the 
four  other  English  tribes  of  Mid-Britain  before  he  could 
have  ventured  to  attack  Wessex  and  tear  from  it  in  G28 
the  country  of  the  Hwiccas  and  Magessetas  on  the  Severn. 
Even  with  this  accession  of  strength,  however,  he  was  still 
no  match  for  Northumbria,  But  the  war  of  the  English 
people  with  the  Britons  seems  at  this  moment  to  have  died 
down  for  a  season,  and  the  Mercian  ruler  boldly  broke 
through  the  barrier  which  had  parted  the  two  races  till 
now  by  allying  himself  with  a  Welsh  King,  Cadwallon, 
for  a  joint  attack  on  Eadwine,  The  armies  met  in  633 
at  a  place  called  Hrethfeld,  and  in  the  fight  which  followed 
Eadwine  was  defeated  and  slain, 

Bernicia  seized  on  the  fall  of  Eadwine  to  recall  the  line 
of  ^thelfrith  to  its  throne ;  and  after  a  year  of  anarchy 
his  second  son,  Oswald,  became  its  King.  The  Welsh 
had  remained  encamped  in  the  heart  of  the  north,  and 
Oswald's  first  fight  was  with  Cadwallon.  A  small  North- 
umbrian force  gathered  in  635  near  the  Roman  Wall,  and 
pledged  itself  at  the  new  King's  bidding  to  become  Chris- 
tian if  it  conquered  in  the  fight.  Cadwallon  fell  fighting 
on  the  "Heaven's  Field,"  as  after-times  called  the  field  of 
battle ;  the  submission  of  Deira  to  the  conqueror  restored 
the  kingdom  of  Northumbria;  and  for  nine  years  the 
power  of  Oswald  equalled  that  of  Eadwine.  It  was  not 
the  Church  of  Paulinus  which  nerved  Oswald  to  this 
struggle  for  the  Cross,  or  which  carried  out  in  Bernicia 
the  work  of  conversion  which  his  victory  began.  Paulinus 
fled  from  Northumbria  at  Eadwine's  fall;  and  the  Roman 
Church,  though  established  in  Kent,  did  little  in  contend- 
ing elsewhere  against  the  heathen  reaction.  Its  place  in 
the  conversion  of  northern  England  was  taken  by  mission- 
aries from  Ireland.  To  understand  the  true  meaning  of 
this  change  we  must  remember  how  greatly  the  Christian 


S(j  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

Cliiircli  in  the  west  had  been  affected  bj^  the  German  in- 
vasion. Before  the  landing  of  the  English  in  Britain  the 
Christian  Church  stretched  in  an  unbroken  line  across 
Western  Europe  to  the  furthest  coasts  of  Ireland.  The 
conquest  of  Britain  by  the  pagan  English  thrust  a  wedge 
of  heathendom  into  the  heart  of  this  great  communion 
and  broke  it  into  two  unequal  parts.  On  one  side  lay 
Italy,  Spain,  and  Gaul,  whose  churches  owned  obedience 
to  and  remained  in  direct  contact  with  the  See  of  Rome; 
on  the  ether,  practically  cut  off  from  the  general  body  of 
Christendom,  lay  the  Church  of  Ireland.  But  the  condi- 
tion of  the  two  portions  of  Western  Christendom  was 
very  different.  While  the  vigor  of  Christianity  in  Italy 
and  Gaul  and  Spain  was  exhausted  in  a  bare  struggle  for 
life,  Ireland,  which  remained  unscourged  by  invaders, 
drew  from  its  conversion  an  energy  such  as  it  has  never 
known  since.  Christianity  was  received  there  with  a 
burst  of  popular  enthusiasm,  and  letters  and  arts  sprang 
up  rapidly  in  its  train.  The  science  and  Biblical  knowl- 
edge which  fled  from  the  Continent  took  refuge  in  its 
schools.  The  new  Christian  life  soon  beat  too  strongly  to 
brook  confinement  within  the  bounds  of  Ireland  itself. 
Patrick,  the  first  missionary  of  the  island,  had  not  been 
half  a  century  dead  when  Irish  Christianity  flung  itself 
with  a  fiery  zeal  into  battle  with  the  mass  of  heathenism 
which  was  rolling  in  upon  the  Christian  world.  Irish 
missionaries  labored  among  the  Picts  of  the  Highlands 
and  among  the  Frisians  of  the  northern  seas.  An  Irish 
missionary,  Columban,  founded  monasteries  in  Burgundy 
and  the  Apennines.  The  canton  of  St.  Gall  still  com- 
memorates in  its  name  another  Irish  missionary  before 
whom  the  spirits  of  flood  and  fell  fled  wailing  over  the 
waters  of  the  Lake  of  Constance.  For  a  time  it  seemed 
as  if  the  course  of  the  world's  history  was  to  be  changed, 
as  if  the  older  Celtic  race  that  Roman  and  German  had 
swept  before  them  had  turned  to  the  moral  conquest  of 
their  conquerors,  as  if   Celtic  and  not  Latin  Christian- 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  57 

ity  was  to  mould  the  destinies  of  the  Churches  of  the 
West. 

On  a  low  island  of  barren  gneiss-rock  off  the  west  coast 
of  Scotland  an  Irish  refugee,  Columba,  had  raised  the 
famous  mission-station  of  lona.  It  was  within  its  walls 
that  Oswald  in  youth  found  refuge,  and  on  his  accession 
to  the  throne  of  Northumbria  he  called  for  missionaries 
from  among  its  monks.  The  first  preacher  sent  in  answer 
to  his  call  obtained  little  success.  He  declared  on  his  re- 
turn that  among  a  people  so  stubborn  and  barbarous  as 
the  Northumbrian  folk  success  was  impossible.  "  Was  it 
their  stubbornness  or  your  severity?"  asked  Aidan,  a 
brother  sitting  by;  "did  you  forget  God's  word  to  give 
them  the  milk  first  and  then  the  meat?"  All  eyes  turned 
on  the  speaker  as  fittest  to  undertake  the  abandoned  mis- 
sion, and  Aidan  sailing  at  their  bidding  fixed  his  bishop's 
see  in  the  island-peninsula  of  Lindisfarne.  Thence,  from 
a  monastery  which  gave  to  the  spot  its  after-name  of  Holy 
Island,  preachers  poured  forth  over  the  heathen  realms. 
Aidan  himself  wandered  on  foot,  preaching  among  the 
peasants  of  Yorkshire  and  Northumbria.  In  his  own 
court  the  King  acted  as  interpreter  to  the  Irish  missiona- 
ries in  their  efforts  to  convert  his  thegns.  A  new  con- 
ception of  kingship  indeed  began  to  blend  itself  with  that 
of  the  warlike  glory  of  JEthelfrith  or  the  wise  administra- 
tion of  Eadwine,  and  the  moral  power  which  was  to  r«ftch 
its  height  in  -Alfred  first  dawns  in  the  story  of  Oswald. 
For  after-times  the  memory  of  Oswald's  gi-eatness  was 
lost  in  the  memory  of  his  piety.  "  By  reason  of  his  con- 
stant habit  of  praying  or  giving  thanks  to  the  Lord  he 
was  wont  wherever  he  sat  to  hold  his  hands  upturned  on 
his  knees."  As  he  feasted  with  Bishop  Aidan  by  his  side, 
the  thegn,  or  noble  of  his  war-band,  whom  he  had  sent  to 
give  alms  to  the  poor  at  his  gate,  told  him  of  a  multitude 
that  still  waited  fasting  without.  The  King  at  once  bade 
the  untasted  meat  before  him  be  carried  to  the  poor,  and 
his  silver  dish  be  parted  piecemeal  among  them.     Aidan 


63  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  TEOPLE.        [Book  I. 


seized  the  royal  hand  and  blessed  it.     "May  this  hand," 
he  cried,  "never  grow  old." 

Oswald's  lordship  stretched  as  widely  over  Britain  aa 
that  of  his  predecessor  Eadwine.  In  him  even  more  than 
in  Eadwine  men  saw  some  faint  likeness  of  the  older  Em- 
perors; once  indeed  a  writer  from  the  land  of  the  Plots 
calls  Oswald  "Emperor  of  the  whole  of  Britain."  IJ  i 
power  was  bent  to  carry  forward  the  conversion  of  a., 
England,  but  prisoned  as  it  was  to  the  central  districts 
of  the  country  heathendom  fought  desperately  for  life. 
Penda  was  still  ils  rallying-point.  His  long  reign  was 
one  continuous  battle  with  the  new  religion ;  but  it  was  a 
battle  rather  with  the  supremac}^  of  Christian  Northum- 
bria  than  with  the  suprem.acy  of  the  Cross.  East-Anglia 
became  at  last  the  field  of  contest  between  the  two  powers ; 
and  in  04:2  Oswald  marched  to  deliver  it  from  the  Mercian 
rule.  But  his  doom  was  the  doom  of  Eadwine,  and  in  a 
battle  called  the  battle  of  the  Maserfeld  he  was  overthrown 
and  slain.  For  a  few  years  after  his  victory  at  the  Maser- 
feld, Penda  stood  supreme  in  Britain.  Heathenism  tri- 
umphed with  him.  If  V/essex  did  not  own  his  overlordship 
as  it  had  owned  that  of  Oswald,  its  King  threw  off  the 
Christian  faith  which  he  had  embraced  but  a  few  years 
back  at  the  preaching  of  Birinus.  Even  Deira  seems  to 
have  owned  Penda's  sway.  Bernicia  alone,  though  dis- 
tracted by  civil  war  between  rival  claimants  for  its  throne, 
refused  to  yield.  Year  by  year  the  Mercian  King  carried 
his  ravages  over  the  north ;  once  he  reached  even  the  royal 
city,  the  impregnable  rock-fortress  of  Bamborough.  De- 
spairing of  success  in  an  assault,  he  pulled  down  the  cot- 
tages around,  and  piling  their  wood  against  its  walls  fired 
the  mass  in  a  fair  v.ind  that  drove  the  flames  on  the  town. 
"See,  Lord,  what  ill  Penda  is  doing,"  cried  Aidan  from 
his  hermit  cell  in  the  islet  of  Fame,  as  he  saw  the  smoke 
drifting  over  the  city,  and  a  change  of  wind — so  ran  the 
legend  of  Northumbria's  agony — drove  back  the  flames  on 
those  who  kindled  them.     But  burned  and  harried  as  it 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  59 

was,  Beriiicia  still  fought  for  the  Cross.  Oswiii,  a  third 
son  of  ^thelfrith,  held  his  ground  stoutly  against  Penda's 
inroads  till  their  cessation  enabled  him  to  build  up  again 
the  old  Northumbrian  kingdom  by  a  march  upon  Deira. 
The  union  of  the  two  realms  was  never  henceforth  to  be 
dissolved ;  and  its  influence  was  at  once  seen  in  the  re- 
newal of  Christianity  throughout  Britain.  East-Anglia; 
conquered  as  it  was,  had  clung  to  its  faith.  Wessez 
quietly  became  Christian  again.  Penda's  own  son,  whom 
he  had  set  over  the  Middle-English,  received  baptism  and 
teachers  from  Lindisfarne.  At  last  the  missionaries  of 
the  new  belief  appeared  fearlessly  among  the  Mercians 
themselves.  Penda  gave  them  no  hindrance.  In  words 
that  mark  the  temper  of  a  man  of  whom  we  would  will- 
ingly know  more,  Bseda  tells  us  that  the  old  King  only 
"hated  and  scorned  those  whom  he  saw  not  doing  the 
works  of  the  faith  they  had  received."  His  attitude 
shows  that  Penda  looked  with  the  tolerance  of  his  race  on 
all  questions  of  creed,  and  that  he  was  fighting  less  for 
heathenism  than  for  political  independence.  And  now 
the  growing  power  of  Oswiu  called  him  to  the  old  strug- 
gle with  Northumbria.  In  655  he  met  Oswiu  in  the  field 
of  Winwsed  by  Leeds.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  Northum- 
brian sought  to  avert  Penda's  attack  by  offers  of  orna- 
ments and  costly  gifts.  "  If  the  pagans  will  not  accept 
them, "  Oswiu  cried  at  last,  "  let  us  offer  them  to  One  that 
will;"  and  he  vowed  that  if  successful  he  would  dedicate 
his  daughter  to  God,  and  endow  twelve  monasteries  in  his 
realm.  Victory  at  last  declared  for  the  faith  of  Christ. 
Penda  himself  fell  on  the  field.  The  river  over  which  the 
Mercians  fled  was  swollen  with  a  great  rain ;  it  swept 
away  the  fragments  of  the  heathen  host,  and  the  cause  of 
the  older  gods  was  lost  forever. 

The  terrible  struggle  between  heathendom  and  Christi- 
anity was  followed  by  a  long  and  profound  peace.  For 
three  years  after  the  battle  of  Winwa3d  Mercia  was  gov- 
erned by  Northumbrian  thegns  ii^  Oswiu 's  name.     The 


60  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  I 

winning  of  central  England  was  a  victory  for  Irish  Chris- 
tianity as  well  as  for  Oswiu.  Even  in  Mercia  itself 
heathendom  was  dead  with  Penda.  "Being  thus  freed," 
Baida  tells  us,  "  the  Mercians  with  their  King  rejoiced  to 
serve  the  true  King,  Christ."  Its  three  provinces,  the 
earlier  Mercia,  the  Middle-English,  and  the  Lindiswaras, 
were  united  in  the  bishopric  of  the  missionary  Ceadda, 
\he  St.  Chad  to  whom  Lichfield  is  still  dedicated.  Ceadda 
was  a  monk  of  Lindisfarne,  so  simple  and  lowly  in  temper 
that  he  travelled  on  foot  on  his  long  mission  journeys  till 
Archbishop  Theodore  with  his  own  hands  lifted  him  on 
horseback.  The  old  Celtic  poetry  breaks  out  in  his  death- 
legend,  as  it  tells  us  how  voices  of  singers  singing  sweetly 
descended  from  heaven  to  the  little  cell  beside  St.  Mary's 
Church  where  the  bishop  lay  dying.  Then  "the  same 
song  ascended  from  the  roof  again,  and  returned  heaven- 
ward by  the  way  that  it  came."  It  was  the  soul  of  his 
brother,  the  missionary  Cedd,  come  with  a  choir  of  angels 
to  solace  the  last  hours  of  Ceadda. 

In  Northumbria  the  work  of  his  fellow-missionaries  has 
almost  been  lost  in  the  glory  of  Cuthbert.  No  story  better 
lights  up  for  us  the  new  religious  life  of  the  time  than  the 
story  of  this  Apostle  of  the  Lowlands.  Born  on  the 
southern  edge  of  the  Lammermoor,  Cuthbert  found  shelter 
at  eight  years  old  in  a  widow's  house  in  the  little  village 
of  Wranholm.  Already  in  youth  his  robust  frame  had  a 
poetic  sensibility  which  caught  even  in  the  chance  word 
of  a  game  a  call  to  higher  things,  and  a  passing  attack  of 
lameness  deepened  the  religious  impression.  A  traveller 
coming  in  his  white  mantle  over  the  hillside  and  stopping 
his  horse  to  tend  Cuthbert 's  injured  knee  seemed  to  him 
an  angel.  The  boy's  shepherd  life  carried  him  to  the 
bleak  upland,  still  famous  as  a  sheepwalk,  though  a  scant 
herbage  scarce  veils  the  whinstone  rock.  There  meteors 
plunging  into  the  night  became  to  him  a  company  of  an- 
gelic spirits  carrying  the  soul  of  Bishop  Aidan  heaven- 
ward, and  his  longings  slowty  settled  into  a  resolute  will 


Chap.  2.]  EAELY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  61 


toward  a  religious  life.     In  651  he  made  his  way  to  a 
group  of  straw-thatched  log-huts  in  the  midst  of  untilled 
solitudes  where  a  few  Irish  monks  from  Lindisfarne  had 
settled  in  the  mission-station  of  Melrose.     To-day  the  land 
is  a  land  of  poetry  and  romance.     Cheviot  and  Lammer- 
moor,  Ettrick  and  Teviotdale,  Yarrow  and  Annan-water, 
are  musical   with    old    ballads  and    border    minstrelsy. 
Agriculture  has  chosen  its  valleys  for  her  favorite  seat, 
and  drainage  and  steam-power  have  turned  sedgy  marshes 
into  farm  and  meadow.     But  to  see  the  Lowlands  as  they 
were  in  Cuthbert's  day  we  must  sweep  meadow  and  farm 
away  again,  and  replace  them  by  vast  solitudes,  dotted 
here  and  there  with  clusters  of  wooden  hovels  and  crossed 
by  boggy  tracks,  over  which  travellers  rode  spear  in  hand 
and  eye  kept  cautiously  about  them.     The  Northumbrian 
peasantry  among  whom  he  journeyed  were  for  the  most 
part  Christians  only  in  name.     With  Teutonic  indifference 
they  yielded  to  their  thegns  in  nominally  accepting  the 
new  Christianity  as  these  had  yielded  to  the  king.     But 
they  retained  their  old  superstitions  side  by  side  with  the 
new  worship ;  plague  or  mishap  drove  them  back  to  a  re- 
liance on  their  heathen  charms  and  amulets ;  and  if  trou- 
ble befell  the  Christian  preachers  who  came  settling  among 
them,  they  took  it  as  proof  of  the  wrath  of  the  older  gods. 
When  some  log-rafts  which  were  floating  down  the  Tyne 
for  the  construction  of  an  abbey  at  its  mouth  drifted  with 
the  monks  who  were  at  work  on  them  out  to  sea,  the  rustic 
bystanders  shouted,  "  Let  nobody  pray  for  them ;    let  no- 
body pity  these  men ;  for  they  have  taken  away  from  us 
our  old  worship,  and  how  their  new-fangled  customs  are 
to  be  kept  nobody  knows."     On  foot,  on  horseback,  Cuth- 
bert  wandered  among  listeners  such  as  these,  choosing 
above  all    the    remoter   mountain   villages   from    whose 
roughness  and  poverty  other  teachers  turned  aside.     Un- 
like his  Irish  comrades,  he  needed  no  interpreter  as  he 
passed  from  village  to  village;   the  frugal,  long-headed 
Northumbrians  listened  willingly  to  one  who  was  himself 


62  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

a  peasant  of  the  Lowlands,  and  who  had  caught  the  rough 
Northumbrian  burr  along  the  banks  of  the  Leader.  His 
patience,  his  humorous  good  sense,  the  sweetness  of  his 
look,  told  for  him,  and  not  less  the  stout  vigorous  frame 
which  fitted  the  peasant-preacher  for  the  hard  life  he  had 
chosen.  "  Never  did  man  die  of  hunger  who  served  God 
faithfully,"  he  would  say,  when  nightfall  found  them  sup- 
perless  in  the  waste.  "  Look  at  the  eagle  overhead !  God 
can  feed  us  through  him  if  He  will" — and  once  at  least  lie 
owed  his  meal  to  a  fish  that  the  scared  bird  lot  fall.  A 
snowstorm  drove  his  boat  on  the  coast  of  Fife.  "  The 
snow  closes  the  road  along  the  shore,"  mourned  his  com- 
rades ;  "  the  storm  bars  our  way  over  sea. "  "  There  is 
still  the  way  of  heaven  that  lies  open,"  said  Cuthbert. 

While  missionaries  were  thus  laboring  among  its  peas- 
antry Northumbria  saw  the  rise  of  a  number  of  monas- 
teries, not  bound  indeed  by  the  strict  ties  of  the  Benedic- 
tine rule,  but  gathered  on  the  loose  Celtic  model  of  the 
family  or  the  clan  round  some  noble  and  wealthy  person 
who  sought  devotional  retirement.  The  most  notable  and 
wealthy  of  these  houses  was  that  of  Streoneshalh,  where 
Hild,  a  woman  of  roj^al  race,  reared  her  abbey  on  the  cliffs 
of  Whitby,  looking  out  over  the  Northern  Sea.  Hild  was 
a  Northumbrian  Deborah  whose  counsel  was  sought  even 
by  kings ;  and  the  double  monastery  over  which  she  ruled 
became  a  seminary  of  bishops  and  priests.  The  sainted 
John  of  Beverley  was  among  her  scholars.  But  the  name 
which  really  throws  glory  over  Whitby  is  the  name  of  a 
cowherd  from  whose  lips  during  the  reign  of  Oswiu  flowed 
the  first  great  English  song.  Though  well  advanced  in 
years,  Csedmon  had  learned  nothing  of  the  art  of  verse, 
the  alliterative  jingle  so  common  among  his  fellows, 
"  wherefore  being  sometimes  at  feasts,  when  all  agreed  for 
glee's  sake  to  sing  in  turn,  he  no  sooner  saw  the  harp 
come  toward  him  than  he  rose  from  the  board  and  went 
homeward.  Once  when  he  had  done  thus,  and  gone 
from  the  feast  to  the  stable"^vhere  be  had  that  night  charge 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449— 107L  63 


of  the  cattle,  there  appeared  to  him  in  his  sleep  One  who 
said,  greeting  him  by  name,  'Sing,  Csedmon,  some  song 
to  Me.'  'I  cannot  sing,'  he  answered;  'for  this  cause  left 
I  the  feast  and  came  hither.'  He  who  talked  with  him 
answered,  'However  that  be,  you  shall  sing  to  Me. '  'What 
shall  I  'sing?'  rejoined  Ctedmon.  'The  beginning  of 
created  things, '  replied  He.  In  the  morning  the  cowherd 
stood  before  Hild  and  told  his  dream.  Abbess  and  breth- 
ren alike  concluded  'that  heavenly  grace  had  been  con- 
ferred on  him  by  the  Lord.'  They  translated  for  Csedmon 
a  passage  in  Holy  Writ,  'bidding  him,  if  he  could,  put 
the  same  into  verse. '  The  next  morning  he  gave  it  them 
composed  in  excellent  verse,  whereon  the  abbess,  under- 
standing the  divine  grace  in  the  man,  bade  him  quit  the 
secular  habit  and  take  on  him  the  monastic  life."  Piece 
by  piece  the  sacred  story  was  thus  thrown  into  Csedmon's 
poem.  "  He  sang  of  the  creation  of  the  world,  of  the  origin 
of  man,  and  of  all  the  history  of  Israel ;  of  their  departure 
from  Egypt  and  entering  into  the  Promised  Land ;  of  the 
incarnation,  passion,  and  resurrection  of  Christ,  and  of 
Plis  ascension ;  of  the  terror  of  future  judgment,  the  hor- 
ror of  hell-pangs,  and  the  joys  of  heaven." 

But  even  while  Csedmon  was  singing,  the  glories  of 
Northumbria  and  of  the  Irish  Church  were  passing  away. 
The  revival  of  Mercia  was  as  rapid  as  its  fall.  Only  a  few 
years  after  Penda's  defeat  the  Mercians  threw  off  Oswiu's 
yoke  and  set  Wulfhere,  a  son  of  Penda,  on  their  throne. 
Thv-'y  were  aided  in  their  revolt,  no  doubt,  by  a  religious 
strife  which  was  now  rending  the  Northumbrian  realm. 
The  labor  of  Aidan,  the  victories  of  Oswald  and  Oswiu 
seemed  to  have  annexed  the  north  to  the  Irish  Church. 
The  monks  of  Lindisfarne,  or  of  the  new  religious  houses 
whose  foundation  followed  that  of  Lindisfarne,  looked  for 
their  ecclesiastical  tradition,  not  to  Rome  but  to  Ireland ; 
and  quoted  for  their  guidance  the  instructions,  not  of 
Gregory,  but  of  Columl)a.  Whatever  claims  of  supremacy 
over  the  whole  English  Church  might  be  pressed  by  the 


64  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I 

see  of  Canterbury,  the  real  metropolitan  of  the  Church  as 
it  existed  in  the  North  of  England  was  the  Abbot  of  loua. 
But  Oswiu's  queen  brought  with  her  from  Kent  the  loy- 
alty of  the  Kentish  Church  to  the  Roman  see;  and  the 
visit  of  two  young  thegns  to  the  Imperial  city  raised  their 
love  of  Rome  into  a  passionate  fanaticism.  The  elder  of 
these,  Benedict  Biscop,  returned  to  denounce  the  usages 
in  which  the  Irish  Church  differed  from  the  Roman  as 
schismatic;  and  the  vigor  of  his  comrade  Wilfrid  stirred 
so  hot  a  strife  that  Oswiu  was  prevailed  upon  to  summon 
in  664  a  great  council  at  Whitby,  where  the  future  eccle- 
siastical allegiance  of  his  realm  should  be  decided.  The 
points  actually  contested  were  trivial  enough.  Colman, 
Aidan's  successor  at  Holy  Island,  pleaded  for  the  Irish 
fashion  of  the  tonsure,  and  for  the  Irish  time  of  keeping 
Easter :  Wilfrid  pleaded  for  the  Roman.  The  one  dispu- 
tant appealed  to  the  authority  of  Columba,  the  other  to 
that  of  St.  Peter.  "You  own,"  cried  the  King  at  last  to 
Colman,  "  that  Christ  gave  to  Peter  the  keys  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven — has  He  given  such  power  to  Columba?" 
The  bishop  could  but  answer  "  No. "  "  Then  will  I  rather 
obey  the  porter  of  heaven,"  said  Oswiu,  "lest  when  I 
reach  its  gates  he  who  has  the  keys  in  his  keeping  turn 
his  back  on  me,  and  there  be  none  to  open."  The  humor- 
ous tone  of  Oswiu's  decision  could  not  hide  its  importance, 
and  the  synod  had  no  sooner  broken  up  than  Colman,  fol- 
lowed by  the  whole  of  the  Irish-born  brethren  and  thir+y 
of  their  English  fellows,  forsook  the  see  of  St.  Aidan  %nd 
sailed  away  to  lona.  Trivial  in  fact  as  were  the  actual 
points  of  difference  which  severed  the  Roman  Church  from 
the  Irish,  the  question  to  which  communion  Northumbria 
should  belong  was  of  immense  moment  to  the  after- fortunes 
of  England.  Had  the  Church  of  Aidan  finally  won,  the 
later  ecclesiastical  history  of  England  would  probably  have 
resembled  that  of  Ireland.  Devoid  of  that  power  of  or- 
ganization which  was  the  strength  of  the  Roman  Church, 
the  Celtic  Church  in  its  own  Irish  home  took  the  clan  sys* 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  65 

tern  of  the  country  as  the  basis  of  its  government.  Tribal 
quarrels  and  ecclesiastical  controversies  became  inextrica- 
bly confounded ;  and  the  clergy,  robbed  of  ail  really  spir- 
itual influence,  contributed  no  element  save  that  of  disor- 
der to  the  state.  Hundreds  of  wandering  bishops,  a  vast 
religious  authority  wielded  by  hereditary  chieftains,  the 
dissociation  of  piety  from  morality,  the  absence  of  those 
larger  and  more  humanizing  influences  which  contact  with 
a  wider  world  alone  can  give,  this  is  a  picture  which  the 
Irish  Church  of  later  times  presents  to  us.  It  was  from 
such  a  chaos  as  this  that  England  was  saved  by  the  vic- 
tory of  Rome  in  the  Synod  of  Whitby.  But  the  success 
of  Wilfrid  dispelled  a  yet  greater  danger.  Had  England 
clung  to  the  Irish  Church  it  must  have  remained  spiritu- 
ally isolated  from  the  bulk  of  the  Western  world.  Fallen 
as  Rome  might  be  from  its  older  greatness,  it  preserved 
the  traditions  of  civilization,  of  letters  and  art  and  law. 
Its  faith  still  served  as  a  bond  which  held  together  the  na- 
tions that  sprang  from  the  wreck  of  the  Empire.  To  fight 
against  Rome  was,  as  Wilfrid  said,  "  to  fight  against  the 
world,"  To  repulse  Rome  was  to  condemn  England  to 
isolation.  Dimly  as  such  thoughts  may  have  presented 
themselves  to  Oswiu's  mind,  it  was  the  instinct  of  a  states- 
man that  led  him  to  set  aside  the  love  and  gratitude  of 
his  youth  and  to  link  England  to  Rome  in  the  Synod  of 
Whitby. 

Oswiu's  assent  to  the  vigoi-ous  measures  of  organization 
undertaken  by  a  Greek  monk,  Theodore  of  Tarsus,  whom 
Rome  dispatched  in  608  to  secure  England  to  her  sway  as 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  marked  a  yet  more  decisive 
step  in  the  new  policy.  The  work  of  Theodore  lay  mamly 
in  the  organization  of  the  episcopate,  and  thus  the  Churcij 
of  England,  as  we  know  it  to-day,  is  the  work,  so  far  a3 
its  outer  form  is  concerned,  of  Theodore.  His  work  was 
determined  in  its  main  outlines  by  the  previous  history  of 
:he  English  people.  The  conquest  of  the  Continent  had 
been  wrought  either  by  races  which  ^^ere  already  Chris- 
VOL.  I.— 6 


66  niSTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  1. 

tian,  or  by  heathens  who  bowed  to  the  Christian  faith  of 
the  nations  they  conquered.  To  this  oneness  of  religion 
between  the  German  invaders  of  the  Empire  and  their 
Koman  subjects  was  owing  the  preservation  of  all  that 
survived  of  the  Roman  world.  The  Church  everywhere 
remained  untouched.  The  Christian  bishop  became  the 
defender  of  the  conquered  Italian  or  Gaul  against  his 
Gothic  and  Lombard  conqueror,  the  mediator  between  the 
German  and  his  subjects,  the  one  bulwark  against  bar- 
baric violence  and  oppression.  To  the  barbarian,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  was  the  representative  of  all  that  was  ven- 
erable in  the  past,  the  living  record  of  law,  of  letters,  and 
of  art.  But  in  Britain  the  priesthood  and  the  people  had 
been  driven  out  together.  When  Theodore  came  to  organ- 
ize the  Church  of  England,  the  very  memory  of  the  older 
Christian  Church  which  existed  in  Roman  Britain  had 
passed  away.  The  first  missionaries  to  the  Englishmen, 
strangers  in  a  heathen  land,  attached  themselves  necessa- 
rily to  the  courts  of  the  kings,  who  were  their  earliest  con- 
verts, and  whose  conversion  was  generally  followed  by  that 
of  their  people.  The  English  bishops  were  thus  at  first 
royal  chaplains,  and  their  diocese  was  naturally  nothing 
but  the  kingdom.  In  this  way  realms  which  are  all  but 
forgotten  are  commemorated  in  the  limits  of  existing  sees. 
That  of  Rochester  represented  till  of  late  an  obscure  king- 
dom of  West  Kent,  and  the  frontier  of  the  original  king- 
dom of  Mercia  may  be  recovered  by  following  the  map  of 
the  ancient  bishopric  of  Lichfield,  In  adding  many  sees 
to  those  he  found  Theodore  was  careful  to  make  their  dio- 
ceses co-extensive  with  existing  tribal  demarcations.  But 
he  soon  passed  from  this  extension  of  the  episcopate  to  its 
organization.  In  his  arrangement  of  dioceses,  and  the 
way  in  which  he  grouped  them  round  the  see  of  Canter- 
bury, in  his  national  synods  and  ecclesiastical  canons, 
Theodore  did  unconsciously  a  political  work.  The  old  di- 
visions of  kingdoms  and  tribes  about  him,  divisions  which 
had  sprung  for  the  most  i}q.rt  from  mere  accidents  of  the 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  67 

conquest,  were  now  fast  breaking  down.  The  smaller  states 
were  by  this  time  practically  absorbed  by  the  three  larger 
cues,  and  of  these  three  Mercia  and  Wessex  were  compelled 
to  bow  to  the  superiority  of  Northumbria.  The  tendency 
to  national  unity  which  was  to  characterize  the  new  Eng- 
land had  thus  already  declared  itself;  but  the  policy  of 
Theodore  clothed  with  a  sacred  form  and  surrounded  with 
divine  sanctions  a  unity  which  as  yet  rested  on  no  basis 
but  the  sword.  The  single  throne  of  the  one  Primate  at 
Canterbury  accustomed  men's  minds  to  the  thought  of  a 
single  throne  for  their  one  temporal  overlord.  The  regu- 
lar subordination  of  priest  to  bishop,  of  bishop  to  primate, 
in  the  administration  of  the  Church,  supplied  a  mould  on 
which  the  civil  organization  of  the  state  quietly  shaped 
itself.  Above  all,  the  councils  gathered  by  Theodore  were 
the  first  of  our  national  gatherings  for  general  legislation. 
It  was  at  a  much  later  time  that  the  Wise  Men  of  Wes- 
sex, or  Northumbria,  or  Mercia  learned  to  come  together 
in  the  Witenagemote  of  all  England.  The  synods  which 
Theodore  convened  as  religiously  representative  of  the 
whole  English  nation  led  the  way  by  their  example  to  our 
national  parliaments.  The  canons  which  these  synods  en- 
acted led  the  way  to  a  national  system  of  law. 

The  organization  of  the  episcopate  was  followed  by  the 
organization  of  the  parish  system.  The  mission-station  or 
monastery  from  which  priest  or  bishop  went  forth  on  jour- 
ney after  journey  to  preach  and  baptize  naturally  disap- 
peared as  the  land  became  Christian.  The  missionaries 
turned  into  settled  clergy.  As  the  King's  chaplain  became 
a  bishop  and  the  kingdom  his  diocese,  so  the  chaplain  of 
an  English  noble  became  the  priest  and  the  manor  his  par- 
ish. Bnt  this  parish  system  is  probably  later  than  Theo- 
dore, and  the  system  of  tithes  which  has  been  sometimes 
coupled  with  his  name  dates  only  from  the  close  of  the 
eighth  century.  What  was  really  due  to  him  was  the  or- 
ganization of  the  episcopate,  and  the  impulse  which  this 
gave  to  national  unity.    But  the  movement  toward  unity 


•8  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 


found  a  sudden  check  in  the  revived  strength  of  Mercia. 
Wulf  here  proved  a  vigorous  and  active  ruler,  and  the  i->eace- 
ful  reign  of  Oswiu  left  him  free  to  build  up  again  during 
sevent-eeji  years  of  rule  (65T-6T5)  that  Mercian  overlord- 
ship  over  the  tribes  of  Mid-Engla.nd  which  had  been  lost 
at  Penda's  death.  He  had  inore  than  his  father's  success. 
Not  only  did  Essex  again  ovm  his  supremacy,  but  even 
London  fell  into  Mercian  hands.  The  West-Saxons  were 
driven  across  the  Thames,  and  nearly  all  their  settlements 
to  the  north  of  that  river  were  annexed  to  the  Mercian 
re^lm.  Wulfhere's  supremacy*  soon  reached  even  south  of 
the  Thames,  for  Sussex  in  its  d  read  of  West-Saxons  found 
protection  in  accepting  his  ovei  lordship,  and  its  king  was 
rewarded  by  a  gift  of  the  two  tnitlying  settlements  of  the 
Jutes — the  Isle  of  Wight  and  the  lands  of  the  Meonwaras 
along  the  Southampton  water — which  we  must  suppose 
had  been  reduced  by  Mercian  anxis.  The  industrial  prog- 
ress of  the  Mercian  kingdom  went  hand  in  hand  with  its 
military  advance.  The  forests  of  its  western  border,  the 
marshes  of  its  eastern  coast,  were  being  cleared  and  drained 
by  monastic  colonies,  whose  success  shows  the  hold  which 
Christianity  had  now  gained  over  its  people.  Heathenism 
indeed  still  held  its  own  in  the  wild  western  woodlands 
and  in  the  yet  wilder  fen- country  on  the  eastern  border  of 
the  kingdom  which  stretched  from  the  "Holland,"  the 
sunk,  hollow  land  of  Lincolnshire,  to  the  channel  of  the 
Ouse,  a  wilderness  of  shallow  waters  and  reedy  islets 
wrapped  in  its  own  dark  mist- veil  and  tenanted  only  by 
flocks  of  screaming  wild-fowl.  But  in  either  quarter  the 
new  faith  made  its  way.  In  the  western  woods  Bishop 
Ecgwine  found  a  site  for  an  abbey  round  which  gathered 
the  town  of  Evesham,  and  the  eastern  fen-land  was  soon 
filled  with  religious  houses.  Here  through  the  liberality 
of  Elng  Wulfhere  rose  the  abbey  of  Peterborough.  Here 
too,  Guthlac,  a  youth  of  the  royal  race  of  Mercia,  sought 
a  refuge  from  the  world  in  the  solitudes  of  Crowland,  and 
BO  great  was  the  reverence  he  won,  that  only  two  years 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  69 

had  passed  since  his  death  when  the  stately  Abbey  of 
Crowland  rose  over  his  tomb.  Earth  was  brought  in  boats 
to  form  a  site;  the  buildings  rested  on  oaken  piles  driven 
into  the  marsh;  a  great  stone  church  replaced  the  hermit's 
cell ;  and  the  toil  of  the  new  brotherhood  changed  the  pools 
around  them  into  fertile  meadow-land. 

In  spite,  however,  of  this  rapid  recovery  of  its  strength 
by  Mercia  Northumbria  remained  the  dominant  state  in 
Britain:  and  Ecgfrith,  who  succeeded  Oswiu  in  670,  so' 
utterly  defeated  Wulfhere  when  war  broke  out  between 
them  that  he  was  glad  to  purchase  peace  by  the  surrender 
of  Lincolnshire.  Peace  would  have  been  purchased  more 
hardly  had  not  Ecgfrith 's  ambition  turned  rather  to  con- 
quests over  the  Briton  than  to  victories  over  his  fellow 
Englishmen.  The  war  between  Briton  and  Englishman 
which  had  languished  since  the  battle  of  Chester  had  been 
revived  some  twelve  years  before  by  an  advance  of  the 
West-Saxons  to  the  southwest.  Unable  to  save  the  pos- 
session of  Wessex  north  of  the  Thames  from  the  grasp  of 
Wulfhere,  their  king,  Cenwalh,  sought  for  compensation 
in  an  attack  on  his  Welsh  neighbors.  A  victory  at  Brad- 
ford on  the  Avon  enabled  him  to  overrun  the  countrv  near 
Mendip  which  had  till  then  been  held  by  the  Britons  ;  and 
a  second  campaign  in  658,  which  ended  in  a  victory  on  the 
skirts  of  the  great  forest  that  covered  Somerset  to  the  east, 
settled  the  "West-Saxons  as  conquerors  round  the  sources 
of  the  Parret.  It  may  have  been  the  example  of  the  West- 
Saxons  which  spurred  Ecgfrith  to  a  series  of  attacks  upon 
his  British  neighbors  in  the  west  which  widened  the  bounds 
of  his  kingdom.  His  reign  marks  the  highest  pitch  of 
Northumbrian  power.  His  armies  chased  the  Britons  fronr. 
the  kingdom  of  Cumbria  and  made  the  district  of  Carlisle 
English  ground.  A  large  part  of  the  conquered  country 
was  bestowed  upon  the  see  of  Lindisfarne,  which  was  at 
this  time  filled  by  one  whom  we  have  seen  before  laboring 
as  the  apostle  of  the  Lowlands.  Cuthbert  had  found  a 
new  mission-station  in  Holy  Island,  and  preached  among 


70  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

the  moors  of  Northumberland  as  he  had  preached  beside 
the  banks  of  Tweed.  He  remained  there  through  the  great 
secession  which  followed  on  the  Synod  of  Whitby,  and  be- 
came prior  of  the  dwindled  company  of  brethren,  now  torn 
with  endless  disputes  against  which  his  patience  and  good 
humor  struggled  in  vain.  Worn  out  at  last,  he  fled  to  a 
little  island  of  basaltic  rock,  one  of  the  Fame  group  not 
far  from  Ida's  fortress  of  Bamborough,  strewn  for  the 
most  part  with  kelp  and  sea- weed,  the  home  of  the  gull 
and  the  seal.  In  the  midst  of  it  rose  his  hut  of  rough 
stones  and  turf,  dug  down  within  deep  into  the  rock,  and 
roofed  with  logs  and  straw.  But  the  reverence  for  his 
sanctity  dragged  Cuthbert  back  to  fill  the  vacant  see  of 
Lindisfarne.  He  entered  Carlisle,  which  the  King  had 
bestowed  upon  the  bishopric,  at  a  moment  when  all  North- 
umbria  was  waiting  for  news  of  a  fresh  campaign  of  Ecg- 
frith's  against  the  Britons  in  the  north.  The  Firth  of 
Forth  had  long  been  the  limit  of  ISTorthumbria,  but  tlv* 
Picts  to  the  north  of  it  owned  Ecgfrith's  supremac3\  In 
685,  however,  the  King  resolved  on  their  actual  subjection 
and  marched  across  the  Forth.  A  sense  of  coming  ill 
weighed  on  Northumbria,  and  its  dread  was  quickened  by 
a  memory  of  the  curses  which  had  been  pronounced  by  the 
bishops  of  Ireland  on  its  King,  when  his  navy,  setting  out 
a  year  before  from  the  newly  conquered  western  coast, 
swept  the  Irish  shores  in  a  raid  which  seemed  like  sacri- 
lege to  those  who  loved  the  home  of  Aidan  and  Columba. 
As  Cuthbert  bent  over  a  Roman  fountain  which  still  stood 
unharmed  among  the  ruins  of  Carlisle,  the  anxious  by- 
standers thought  they  caught  words  of  ill-omen  falliug 
from  the  old  man's  lips.  "Perhaps,"  he  seemed  to  mur- 
mur, "  at  this  very  hour  the  peril  of  the  fight  is  over  and 
done."  "  Watch  and  pray,"  he  said,  when  they  questioned 
iiim  on  the  morrow;  "watch  and  pray."  In  a  few  days 
more  a  solitary  fugitive  escaped  from  the  slaughter  told 
that  the  Picts  had  turned  desperatel}^  to  bay  as  the  Eng- 
lish army  entered  Fife ;  aod  that  Ecgf rith  and  the  flower 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  71 

of  his  Dobles  lay,  a  ghastly  ring  of  corpses,  on  the  far-off 
moorland  of  Nectansmere. 

The  blow  was  a  fatal  one  for  Northumbrian  greatness, 
for  while  the  Picts  pressed  on  the  kingdom  from  the  north 
JEthelred,  Wiilfhere's  successor,  attacked  it  on  the  Mer- 
cian border,  and  the  war  was  only  ended  by  a  peace  which 
left  him  master  of  Middle-England  and  free  to  attempt  the 
direct  conquest  of  the  south.  For  the  moment  this  attempt 
proved  a  fruitless  one.  Mercia  was  still  too  weak  to  grasp 
the  lordship  which  was  slipping  from  Northumbria's  hands, 
while  Wessex  which  seemed  her  destined  prey  rose  at  this 
moment  into  fresh  power  under  the  greatest  of  its  early 
kings.  Ine,  the  West-Saxon  king  whose  reign  covered 
the  long  period  from  688  to  728,  carried  on  during  the 
whole  of  it  the  war  which  Cen twine  had  begun.  He 
pushed  his  way  southward  round  the  marshes  of  the  Par- 
ret  to  a  more  fertile  territory,  and  guarded  the  frontier  of 
his  new  conquests  by  a  wooden  fort  on  the  banks  of  the 
Tone  which  has  grown  into  the  present  Taunton.  The 
West-Saxons  thus  became  masters  of  the  whole  district 
which  now  bears  the  name  of  Somerset.  The  conquest  of 
Sussex  and  of  Kent  on  his  eastern  border  made  Ine  mas- 
ter of  all  Britain  south  of  the  Thames,  and  his  repulse  of 
a  new  Mercian  King,  Ceolred,  in  a  bloody  encounter  at 
Wodnesburh  in  714  seemed  to  establish  the  threefold  divi- 
sion of  the  English  race  between  three  realms  of  almost 
equal  power.  But  able  as  Ine  was  to  hold  Mercia  at  bay, 
he  was  unable  to  hush  the  civil  strife  that  was  the  curse 
of  Wessex,  and  a  wild  legend  tells  the  story  of  the  disgust 
which  drove  him  from  the  world.  He  had  feasted  royally 
at  one  of  his  country  houses,  and  on  the  morrow,  as  he 
rode  from  it,  his  queen  bade  him  turn  back  thither.  The 
king  returned  to  find  his  house  stripped  of  curtains  and 
vessels,  and  foul  with  refuse  and  the  dung  of  cattle,  while 
in  the  royal  bed  where  he  had  slept  with  JEthelburh  rested 
a  sow  with  her  farrow  of  ])igs.  The  scene  had  no  need  of 
the  queen's  comment :  "  See,  my  lord,  how  the  fashion  of 


72  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  l 

this  world  passeth  away !"  In  726  he  sought  peace  in  a 
pilgrimage  to  Rome.  The  anarchy  which  had  driven  Ine 
from  the  throne  broke  out  in  civil  strife  which  left  Wes- 
sex  an  easy  prey  to  -i^thelbald,  the  successor  of  Ceolred  in 
the  Mercian  realm,  -^thelbald  took  up  with  better  for- 
tune the  struggle  of  his  people  for  supremacy  over  the  south. 
He  penetrated  to  the  very  heart  of  the  West-Saxon  king- 
dom, and  his  siege  and  capture  of  the  royal  town  of  Som- 
erton  in  733  ended  the  war.  For  twenty  years  the  over- 
lordship  of  Mercia  was  recognized  by  all  Britain  south  of 
the  Humber.  It  was  at  the  head  of  the  forces  not  of  Mer- 
cia only  but  of  East-Anglia,  Kent,  and  Essex,  as  well  as 
of  the  West-Saxons,  that  ^thelbald  marched  against  the 
Welsh  on  his  western  border. 

In  so  complete  a  mastery  of  the  south  the  Mercian  King 
found  grounds  for  a  hope  that  Northern  Britain  would  also 
yield  to  his  sway.  But  the  dream  of  a  single  England 
was  again  destined  to  be  foiled.  Fallen  as  Northumbria 
was  from  its  old  glory,  it  still  remained  a  great  power. 
Under  the  peaceful  reigns  of  Ecgfrith's  successors.  Aid- 
frith  and  Ceolwulf,  their  kingdom  became  the  literary 
centre  of  Western  Europe.  No  schools  were  more  famous 
than  those  of  Jarrow  and  York.  The  whole  learning  of 
the  age  seemed  to  be  summed  up  in  a  Northumbrian 
scholar.  Bseda — the  Venerable  Bede,  as  later  times  styled 
him — was  born  about  ten  years  after  the  Synod  of  Whitby 
beneath  the  shade  of  a  great  abbey  which  Benedict  Biscop 
was  rearing  by  the  mouth  of  the  Wear.  His  youth  was 
trained  and  his  long  tranquil  life  was  wholly  spent  in  an 
offshoot  of  Benedict's  house  which  was  founded  by  his 
scholar  Ceolfrid.  Bseda  never  stirred  from  Jarrow.  "  I 
spent  my  whole  life  in  the  same  monastery,"  he  says,  "and 
while  attentive  to  the  rule  of  my  order  and  the  service  of 
the  Church,  my  constant  pleasure  lay  in  learning,  or  teach- 
ing, or  writing."  The  words  sketch  for  us  a  scholar's  life, 
the  more  touching  in  its  simplicity  that  it  is  the  life  of 
the  first  great  English  scholar.     The  quiet  grandeur  of  a 


Chap.  2.]  EAELY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  73 


life  consecrated  to  knowledge,  the  tranquil  pleasure  that 
lies  in  learning  and  teaching  and  writing,  dawned  for 
Englishmen  in  the  story  of  Bseda.  While  still  young  he 
became  a  teacher,  and  six  hundred  monks  besides  strangers 
that  flocked  thither  for  instruction  formed  his  school  of 
JarroW.  It  is  hard  to  imagine  how  among  the  toils  of  the 
schoolmaster  and  the  duties  of  the  monk  Bseda  could  have 
found  time  for  the  composition  of  the  numerous  works 
that  made  his  name  famous  in  the  West.  But  materials 
for  study  had  accumulated  in  Northumbria  through  the 
journeys  of  Wilfred  and  Benedict  Biscop  and  the  libraries 
which  were  forming  at  Wearmouth  and  York.  The  tra- 
dition of  the  older  Irish  teachers  still  lingered  to  direct  the 
young  scholar  into  that  path  of  Scriptural  interpretation 
to  which  he  chiefly  owed  his  fame.  Greek,  a  rare  accom- 
plishment in  the  West,  came  to  him  from  the  school  which 
the  Greek  Archbishop  Theodore  founded  beneath  the  waUs 
of  Canterbury.  His  skill  in  the  ecclesiastical  chant  was 
derived  from  a  Roman  cantor  whom  Pope  Vitalian  sent  in 
the  train  of  Benedict  Biscop.  Little  by  little  the  young 
scholar  thus  made  himself  master  of  the  whole  range  of 
the  science  of  his  time ;  he  became,  as  Burke  rightly  styled 
him,  "the  father  of  English  learning."  The  tradition  of 
the  older  classic  culture  was  first  revived  for  England  in 
his  quotations  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  of  Seneca  and  Cicero, 
of  Lucretius  and  Ovid.  Virgil  cast  over  him  the  same 
spell  that  he  cast  over  Dante ;  verses  from  the  ^neid  break 
his  narratives  of  martyrdoms,  and  the  disciple  ventures  on 
the  track  of  the  great  master  in  a  little  eclogue  descriptive 
of  the  approach  of  spring.  His  work  was  done  with  small 
aid  from  others.  "I  am  my  own  secretary,"  he  writes; 
"I  make  my  own  notes.  I  am  my  own  librarian."  But 
forty-five  works  remained  after  his  death  to  attest  his  pro- 
digious industry.  In  his  own  eyes  and  those  of  his  con- 
temporaries the  most  important  among  these  were  the  com- 
mentaries and  homilies  upon  various  books  of  the  Bible 
which  he  had  drawn  from  the  writings  of  the  Fathers.     Bui 


74  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        IBooK  I. 

he  was  far  from  confining  himself  to  theology.  In  trea- 
tises compiled  as  text-books  for  his  scholars  Beeda  threw 
together  all  that  the  world  had  then  accumulated  in  as- 
tronomy and  meteorolog3%  in  physics  and  music,  in  phil- 
osoph}^  grammar,  rhetoric,  arithmetic,  medicine.  But 
the  encyclopaedic  character  of  his  researches  left  him  in 
heart  a  simple  Englishman.  He  loved  his  own  English 
tongue,  he  was  skilled  in  English  song,  his  last  work  was 
a  translation  into  English  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  and 
almost  the  last  words  that  broke  from  his  lips  were  some 
English  rhymes  upon  death. 

But  the  noblest  proof  of  his  love  of  England  lies  in  the 
work  which  immortalizes  his  name.  In  his  "  Ecclesiasti- 
cal Hiytor}^  of  the  English  Nation,"  Bseda  was  at  once  the 
founder  of  mediaeval  history  and  the  first  English  histo- 
rian. All  that  we  really  know  of  the  century  and  a  half 
that  follows  the  landing  of  Augustine  we  know  from  him. 
Wherever  his  own  personal  observation  extended,  the  story 
is  told  with  admirable  detail  and  force.  He  is  hardly  less 
full  or  accurate  in  the  portions  which  he  owed  to  his  Kent- 
ish friends,  Alcwine  and  Nothelm.  What  he  owed  to  no 
informant  was  his  exquisite  faculty  of  story-telling,  and 
yet  no  story  of  his  own  telling  is  so  touching  as  the  story 
of  his  death.  Two  weeks  before  the  Easter  of  735  the  old 
man  was  seized  with  an  extreme  weakness  and  loss  of 
breath.  He  still  preserved,  however,  his  usual  pleasantness 
and  gay  good-humor,  and  in  spite  of  prolonged  sleepless- 
ness continued  his  lectures  to  the  pupils  about  him.  Verses 
of  his  own  English  tongue  broke  from  time  to  time  from 
the  master's  lip — rude  rhymes  that  told  how  before  the 
"need-fare,"  Death's  stern  "must  go,"  none  can  enough 
bethink  him  what  is  to  be  his  doom  for  good  or  ill.  The 
tears  of  Bseda's  scholars  mingled  with  his  song.  "We 
never  read  without  weeping,"  writes  one  of  them.  So  the 
days  rolled  on  to  Ascension-tide,  and  still  master  and  pupils 
toiled  at  their  work,  for  Bseda  longed  to  bring  to  an  end 
his  version  of  St.  John's  Goepel  into  the  English  tongue 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  75 

and  his  extracts  fi*om  Bishop  Isidore.  "  I  don't  want  my 
boys  to  read  a  lie,"  he  answered  those  who  would  have  had 
him  rest,  "  or  to  work  to  no  purpose  after  I  am  gone."  A 
few  daj^s  before  Ascension-tide  his  sickness  grew  upon 
him,  but  he  spent  the  whole  day  in  teaching,  only  saying 
cheerfully  to  his  scholars,  "  Learn  with  what  speed  you 
may;  I  know  not  how  long  I  may  last."  The  dawn  broke 
on  another  sleepless  night,  and  again  the  old  man  called 
his  scholars  round  him  and  bade  them  write.  "  There  is 
still  a  chapter  wanting,"  said  the  scribe,  as  the  morning 
drew  on,  "  and  it  is  hard  for  thee  to  question  thyself  any 
longer."  "It  is  easily  done,"  said  Bseda;  "take  thy  pen 
and  write  quickly."  Amid  tears  and  farewells  the  day 
wore  on  to  eventide.  "  There  is  yet  one  sentence  unwrit- 
ten, dear  master,"  said  the  boy.  "  Write  it  quickly,"  bade 
the  dying  man.  "  It  is  finished  now,"  said  the  little  scribe 
at  last.  "You  speak  truth,"  said  the  master;  "all  is  fin- 
ished now."  Placed  upon  the  pavement,  his  head  sup- 
ported in  his  scholar's  arms,  his  face  turned  to  the  post 
where  he  was  wont  to  pray,  Bseda  chanted  the  solemn 
"Glory  to  God."  As  his  voice  reached  the  close  of  his 
song  he  passed  quietly  away. 

First  among  English  scholars,  first  among  English  the- 
ologians, first  mnong  English  historians,  it  is  in  the  monk 
of  Jarrow  that  English  literature  strikes  its  roots.  In  the 
six  hundred  scholars  who  gathered  round  him  for  instruc- 
tion he  is  the  father  of  our  national  education.  In  his 
physical  treatises  he  is  the  first  figure  to  which  our  science 
looks  back.  But  the  quiet  tenor  of  his  scholar's  life  was 
broken  by  the  growing  anarchy  of  Northumbria,  and  by 
threats  of  war  from  its  Mercian  rival.  At  last  ^thelbald 
marched  on  a  state  which  seemed  exhausted  by  civil  dis- 
cord and  ready  for  submission  to  his  arms.  But  its  king 
Eadberht  showed  himself  worthy  of  the  kings  that  had 
gone  before  him,  and  in  740  he  threw  back  ^thelbald's 
attack  in  a  repulse  which  not  only  ruined  the  Mercian 
rulers  hopes  of  northern  conquest  but  loosened  his  hold  on 


76  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 

the  south.  Already  goaded  to  revolt  by  exactions,  the 
West-Saxons  were  roused  to  a  fresh  struggle  for  indepen- 
dence, and  after  twelve  years  of  continued  outbreaks  the 
whole  people  mustered  at  Burford  under  the  golden  dragon 
of  their  race.  The  fight  was  a  desperate  one,  but  a  sud- 
den panic  seized  the  Mercian  King.  He  fled  from  the 
field,  and  a  decisive  victory  freed  Wessex  from  the  Mercian 
yoke.  Four  years  later,  in  757,  its  freedom  was  main- 
tained by  a  new  victory  at  Secandun ;  but  amidst  the  rout 
of  his  host  ^thelbald  redeemed  the  one  hour  of  shame  that 
had  tarnished  his  glory ;  he  refused  to  fly,  and  fell  fight- 
ing on  the  field. 

But  though  Eadberht  might  beat  back  the  inroads  of 
the  Mercians  and  even  conquer  Strathclyde,  before  the  an- 
archy of  his  own  kingdom  he  could  only  fling  down  his 
sceptre  and  seek  a  refuge  in  the  cloister  of  Lindisfarne. 
From  the  death  of  Baeda  the  history  of  Northumbria  be- 
came in  fact  little  more  than  a  wild  story  of  lawlessness 
and  bloodshed.  King  after  king  was  swept  away  by  trea- 
son and  revolt,  the  country  fell  into  the  hands  of  its  tur- 
bulent nobles,  its  very  fields  lay  waste,  and  the  land  was 
scourged  by  famine  and  plague.  An  anarchy  almost  as 
complete  fell  on  Wessex  after  the  recovery  of  its  freedom. 
Only  in  Mid-England  was  there  any  sign  of  order  and  set- 
tled rule.  The  two  crushing  defeats  at  Burford  and  Se- 
candun, though  they  had  brought  about  revolts  v/hich 
stripped  Mercia  of  all  the  conquests  it  had  made,  were  far 
from  having  broken  the  Mercian  power.  Under  the  long 
reign  of  Offa,  which  went  on  from  755  to  796,  it  rose  again 
to  all  but  its  old  dominion.  Since  the  dissolution  of  the 
temporary  alliance  which  Penda  formed  with  the  Welsh 
King  Cadwallon,  the  war  with  the  Britons  in  the  west  had 
been  the  one  great  hindrance  to  the  progress  of  Mercia. 
But  under  Offa  Mercia  braced  herself  to  the  completion  of 
her  British  conquests.  Beating  back  the  Welsh  from 
Hereford,  and  carrying  his  own  ravages  into  the  heart  of 
Wales,  Offa  in  779  drove  the  King  of  Powys  from  hia 


Chap.  2.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  77 


capital,  which  changed  its  old  name  of  Pengwerii  for  the 
significant  English  title  of  the  Town  in  the  Scrub  or  Bush, 
Scrobbesbyryg,  Shrewsbury.  Experience,  however,  had 
taught  the  Mercian  the  worthlessness  of  raids  like  these, 
and  Offa  resolved  to  create  a  military  border  by  planting 
a  settlement  of  Englishmen  between  the  Severn,  which  had 
till  then  served  as  the  western  boundary  of  the  English 
race,  and  the  huge  "  Offa's  Dyke"  which  he  drew  from  the 
mouth  of  Wye  to  that  of  Dee.  Here,  as  in  the  later  con- 
quests of  the  West-Saxons,  the  old  plan  of  extermination 
was  definitely  abandoned  and  the  Welsh  who  chose  to  re- 
main dwelt  undisturbed  among  their  English  conquerors. 
From  these  conquests  over  the  Britons  Offa  turned  to  build 
up  again  the  realm  which  had  been  shattered  at  Secandun. 
But  his  progress  was  slow.  A  reconquest  of  Kent  in  774- 
woke  anew  the  jealousy  of  the  West-Saxons ;  and  though 
Offa  repulsed  their  attack  at  Bensington  in  777  the  victory 
was  followed  by  several  years  of  inaction.  It  was  not  till 
Wessex  was  again  weakened  by  fresh  anarchy  that  he 
was  able  to  seize  East  Anglia  and  restore  his  realm  to  its 
old  bounds  under  Wulfhere.  Further  he  could  not  go. 
A  Kentish  revolt  occupied  him  till  his  death  in  796,  and 
his  successor  Cenwulf  did  little  but  preserve  the  realm  he 
bequeathed  him.  At  the  close  of  the  eighth  century  the 
drift  of  the  English  peoples  toward  a  national  unity  was 
in  fact  utterly  arrested.  The  work  of  Northumbria  had 
been  foiled  by  the  resistance  of  Mercia ;  the  effort  of  Mer- 
cia  had  broken  down  before  the  resistance  of  Wessex.  A 
threefold  division  seemed  to  have  stamped  itself  upon  the 
land ;  and  so  complete  was  the  balance  of  power  between 
the  three  realms  which  parted  it  that  no  subjection  of  one 
to  the  other  seemed  likely  to  fuse  the  English  tribes  into 
an  English  people. 


CHAPTER  III. 

WESSEX   AND    THE    NORTHMEN. 

796—947. 

The  union  which  each  English  kingdom  in  turn  had 
failed  to  bring  about  was  brought  about  by  the  pressure 
of  the  Northmen.  The  dwellers  in  the  isles  of  the  Baltic 
or  on  either  side  of  the  Scandinavian  peninsula  had  lain 
hidden  till  now  fi"om  Western  Christendom,  waging  their 
battle  for  existence  with  a  stern  climate,  a  barren  soil,  and 
stormy  seas.  It  was  this  hard  fight  for  life  that  left  its 
stamp  on  the  temper  of  Dane,  Swede,  or  Norwegian  alike, 
that  gave  them  their  defiant  energy,  their  ruthless  daring, 
their  passion  for  freedom  and  hatred  of  settled  rule.  Fo- 
rays and  plunder  raids  over  sea  eked  out  their  scanty  live- 
lihood, and  at  the  close  of  the  eighth  century  these  raids 
found  a  wider  sphere  than  the  waters  of  the  northern  seas. 
Tidings  of  the  wealth  garnered  in  the  abbeys  and  towns 
of  the  new  Christendom  which  had  risen  from  the  wreck 
of  Rome  drew  the  pirates  slowly  southward  to  the  coasts 
of  Northern  Gaul;  and  just  before Offa's  death  their  boats 
touched  the  shores  of  Britain.  To  men  of  that  day  it  must 
have  seemed  as  though  the  world  had  gone  back  three 
hundred  years.  The  same  northern  fiords  poured  forth, 
their  pirate-fleets  as  in  the  days  of  Hengest  or  Cerdic. 
There  was  the  same  wild  panic  as  the  black  boats  of  the 
invaders  struck  inland  along  the  river-reaches  or  moored 
round  the  river  isles,  the  same  sights  of  horror,  firing  of 
homesteads,  slaughter  of  men,  women  driven  off  to  slavery 
or  shame,  children  tossed  on  pikes  or  sold  in  the  market- 
place, as  when  the  English  themselves  had  attacked  Brit- 
ain.    Christian  priests  were  again  slain  at  the  altar  by 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  79 

worshippers  of  Woden ;  letters,  arts,  religion,  government 
disappeared  before  these  Northmen  as  before  the  North- 
men of  three  centuries  before. 

In  794  a  pirate  band  plundered  the  monasteries  of  Jar- 
row, and  Holy  Island,  and  the  presence  of  the  freebooters 
soon  told  on  the  political  balance  of  the  English  realms. 
A.  great  revolution  was  going  on  in  the  south,  where  Mer- 
cia  was  torn  by  civil  wars  which  followed  on  Cenwulf 's 
death,  while  the  civil  strife  of  the  West- Saxons  was  hushed 
by  a  new  king,  Ecgberht.  In  Offa's  days  Ecgberht  had 
failed  in  his  claim  of  the  crown  of  Wessex  and  had  been 
driven  to  fly  for  refuge  to  the  court  of  the  Franks.  He 
remained  there  through  the  memorable  year  during  which 
Charles  the  Great  restored  the  Empire  of  the  West,  and 
returned  in  802  to  be  quietly  welcomed  as  King  by  the 
West-Saxon  people.  A  march  into  the  heart  of  Cornwall 
and  the  conquest  of  this  last  fragment  of  the  British  king- 
dom in  the  southwest  freed  his  hands  for  a  strife  with 
Mercia,  which  broke  out  in  825  when  the  Mercian  King 
Beornwulf  marched  into  the  heart  of  Wiltshire.  A  vic- 
tory of  Ecgberht  at  Ellandun  gave  all  England  south  of 
Thames  to  the  West-Saxons,  and  the  defeat  of  Beornwulf 
spurred  the  men  of  East-Anglia  to  rise  in  a  desperate  re- 
volt against  Mercia.  Two  great  overthrows  at  their  hands 
had  already  spent  its  strength  when  Ecgberht  crossed  the 
Thames  in  827,  and  the  realm  of  Penda  and  Offa  bowed 
without  a  struggle  to  its  conqueror.  But  Ecgberht  had 
wider  aims  than  those  of  supremacy  over  Mercia  alone. 
The  dream  of  a  union  of  all  England  drew  him  to  the  north. 
Northumbria  was  still  strong ;  in  learning  and  arts  it  stood 
at  tlie  head  of  the  English  race;  and  under  a  king  like 
Eadberht  it  would  have  withstood  Ecgberht  as  resolutely 
as  it  had  withstood  ^thelbakl.  But  the  ruin  of  JarroAV 
and  Hol}^  Island  had  cast  on  it  a  spell  of  terror.  Torn  by 
civil  strife,  and  desperate  of  finding  in  itself  the  union 
needed  to  meet  the  Northmen,  Northumbria  sought  union 
and  deliverance  in  sabjection  to  a  foreign  master.     Its 


80  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 

thegns  met  Ecgberht  in  Derbyshire,  and  owned  the  su- 
premacy of  Wessex. 

With  the  submission  of  Northumbria  the  work  which 
Oswiu  and  ^thelbald  had  failed  to  do  was  done,  and  the 
whole  English  race  was  for  the  first  time  knit  together 
under  a  single  rule.  The  union  came  not  a  moment  too 
soon.  Had  the  old  severance  of  people  from  people,  the 
old  civil  strife  within  each  separate  realm,  gone  on  it  is 
hard  to  see  how  the  attacks  of  the  Northmen  could  have 
been  withstood.  They  were  already  settled  in  Ireland,  and 
from  Ireland  a  northern  host  landed  in  836  at  Charmouth 
in  Dorsetshire  strong  enough  to  drive  Ecgberht,  when  he 
hastened  to  meet  them,  from  the  field.  His  victory  the 
year  after  at  Hengestdun  won  a  little  rest  for  the  land ;  but 
^thelwulf  who  mounted  the  throne  on  Ecgberht's  death 
in  839  had  to  face  an  attack  which  was  only  beaten  off  by 
years  of  hard  fighting,  ^thelwulf  fought  bravely  in  de- 
fence of  his  realm;  in  his  defeat  at  Charmouth  as  in  a 
final  victory  at  Aclea  in  851  he  led  his  troops  in  person 
against  the  sea-robbers ;  and  his  success  won  peace  for  the 
land  through  the  short  and  uneventful  reigns  of  his  sons 
^thelbald  and  ^thelberht.  But  the  northern  storm  burst 
in  full  force  upon  England  when  a  third  son,  JEthelred, 
followed  his  brothers  on  the  throne.  The  Northmen  were 
now  settled  on  the  coast  of  Ireland  and  the  coast  of  Gaul ; 
they  were  masters  of  the  sea;  and  from  west  and  east  alike 
they  closed  upon  Britain.  While  one  host  from  Ireland 
fell  on  the  Scot  kingdom  north  of  the  Firth  of  Forth,  an- 
other from  Scandinavia  landed  in  8GG  on  the  co&st  of  East- 
Anglia  under  Hubba  and  marched  the  next  year  upon  York. 
A  victory  over  two  claimants  of  its  crown  gave  the  pirates 
Northumbria;  and  their  two  armies  united  at  Nottingham 
in  868  for  an  attack  on  the  Mercian  realm.  Mercia  was 
saved  by  a  march  of  King  ^thelred  to  Nottingham,  but 
the  peace  he  made  there  witli  the  Northmen  left  them  leis- 
ure to  prepare  for  an  invasion  of  East-Anglia,  whose  un- 
der-King,  Eadmund,  brought  prisoner  before  their  leaders. 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  81 

was  bound  to  a  tree  and  shot  to  death  with  arrows.  His 
martyrdom  by  the  heathen  made  Eadmund  the  St.  Sebas- 
tian of  English  legend ;  in  later  days  his  figure  gleamed 
from  the  pictured  windows  of  every  church  along  the  east- 
ern coast,  and  the  stately'  Abbey  of  St.  Edmundsbury  rose 
over  his  relics.  With  him  ended  the  line  of  East- Anglian 
under-kings,  for  his  kingdom  was  not  only  conquered  but 
divided  among  the  soldiers  of  the  pirate  host,  and  their 
leader  Guthrum  assumed  its  crown.  Then  the  Northmen 
turned  to  the  richer  spoil  of  the  great  abbeys  of  the  Fen. 
Peterborough,  Crowlaud,  Ely  went  up  in  flames,  and  their 
monks  fled  or  were  slain  among  the  ruins.  Mercia,  though 
still  spared  from  actual  conquest,  cowered  panic-stricken 
before  the  Northmen,  and  by  payment  of  tribute  owned 
them  as  its  overlords. 

In  five  years  the  work  of  Ecgberht  had  been  undone, 
and  England  north  of  the  Thames  had  been  torn  from  the 
overlordship  of  Wessex.  So  rapid  a  change  could  only 
have  been  made  possible  by  the  temper  of  the  conquered 
kingdoms.  To  them  the  conquest  was  simply  their  trans- 
fer from  one  overlord  to  another,  and  it  may  be  that  in  all 
there  were  men  who  preferred  the  overlordship  of  the 
Northman  to  the  overlordship  of  the  West-Saxon.  But 
the  loss  of  the  subject  kingdoms  left  Wessex  face  to  face 
with  the  invaders.  The  time  had  now  come  for  it  to  fight, 
not  for  supremacy,  but  for  life.  As  j^et  the  land  seemed 
paralyzed  by  terror.  With  the  exception  of  his  one  march 
on  Nottingham,  King  ^thelred  had  done  nothing  to  save 
his  under-kingdoms  from  the  wreck.  But  the  pirates  no 
sooner  pushed  up  Thames  to  Reading  in  871  than  the  West- 
Saxons,  attacked  on  their  own  soil,  turned  fiercely  at  bay. 
A  desperate  attack  drove  the  Northmen  from  Ashdown  on 
the  heights  that  overlooked  the  Vale  of  White  Horse,  but 
their  camp  in  the  tongue  of  land  between  the  Kennet  and 
Thames  proved  impregnable,  ^thelred  died  in  the  midst 
of  the  struggle,  and  his  brother  Alfred,  who  now  became 
king,  bought  the  withdrawal  of  the  pirates  and  a  few  years' 
Vol.  I.— 6 


83  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

breathiug-space  for  his  realm.  It  was  easy  for  the  quick 
eye  of  Alfred  to  see  that  the  Northmen  had  withdrawn 
simply  with  the  view  of  gaining  firmer  footing  for  a  new 
attack;  three  years  indeed  had  hardly  passed  before  Mer- 
(.ia  was  invaded  and  its  under-King  driven  over  sea  to 
;aake  place  for  a  tributary  of  the  invaders.  From  Repton 
.  uilf  their  host  marched  northward  to  the  Tyne,  while  Guth- 
rum  led  the  rest  into  his  kingdom  of  East-Anglia  to  pre- 
pare for  their  next  year's  attack  on  Wessex.  In  876  his 
ileet  appeared  before  Wareham,  and  when  driven  thence 
by  Alfred,  the  Northmen  threw  themselves  into  Exeter. 
Their  presence  there  was  likely  to  stir  a  rising  of  the 
Welsh,  and  through  the  winter  -Alfred  girded  himself  for 
this  new  peril.  At  break  of  spring  his  army  closed  round 
the  town,  a  hired  fleet  cruised  off  the  coast  to  guard  against 
rescue,  and  the  defeat  of  their  fellows  at  Wareham  in  an 
attempt  to  relieve  them  drove  the  pirates  to  surrender. 
They  swore  to  leave  Wessex  and  withdrew  to  Gloucester. 
But  Alfred  had  hardly  disbanded  his  troops  when  his  en- 
emies, roused  by  the  arrival  of  fresh  hordes  eager  for  plun- 
der, reappeared  at  Chippenham,  and  in  the  opening  of  878 
marched  ravaging  over  the  land.  The  surprise  of  Wessex 
was  complete,  and  for  a  month  or  two  the  general  panic 
loft  no  hope  of  resistance.  Alfred,  with  his  small  band 
of  followers,  could  only  throw  himself  into  a  fort  raised 
hastily  in  the  isle  of  Athelney  among  the  marshes  of  the 
Parret,  a  position  from  which  he  could  watch  closely  the 
movements  of  his  foes.  But  with  the  first  burst  of  spring 
he  called  the  thegns  of  Somerset  to  his  standard,  and  still 
gathering  troops  as  he  moved  marched  through  Wiltshire 
on  the  Northmen,  He  found  their  host  at  Edington,  de- 
feated it  in  a  great  battle,  and  after  a  siege  of  fourteen 
days  forced  them  to  surrender  and  to  bind  themselves  by 
a  solemn  peace  or  "'  frith"  at  Wedmore  in  Somerset.  In 
form  the  Peace  of  Wedmore  seemed  a  surrender  of  the  bulk 
of  Britain  to  its  invaders.  All  Northumbria,  all  East- 
Anglia,  all  Central  England  east  of  a  line  which  stretched 


Chap.  3.]  Ei^RLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  83 

from  Thames'  mouth  along  the  Lea  to  Bedford,  theuce 
along  the  Ouse  to  Watling  Street,  and  by  Watling  Street 
to  Chester,  was  left  subject  to  the  Northmen.  Through- 
out this  'Danelagh' — as  it  was  called — the  conquerors  set- 
tled down  among  the  conquered  population  as  lords  of  the 
soil,  thickl}'  in  Northern  Britain,  more  thinly  in  its  cen- 
tral districts,  but  everywhere  guarding  jealously  their  old 
isolation  and  gathering  in  separate  "  heres"  or  armies  round 
towns  which  were  only  linked  in  loose  confederacies.  The 
peace  had  in  fact  saved  little  more  than  Wessex  itself. 
But  in  saving  Wessex  it  saved  England.  The  spell  of  ter- 
ror was  broken.  The  tide  of  invasion  turned.  From  an 
attitude  of  attack  the  Northmen  were  thrown  back  on  an 
attitude  of  defence.  The  whole  reign  of  Alfred  was  a 
preparation  for  a  fresh  struggle  that  was  to  wrest  back 
from  the  pirates  the  land  they  had  won. 

What  really  gave  England  heart  for  such  a  struggle  was 
the  courage  and  energy  of  the  King  himself.  Alfred  was 
the  noblest  as  he  was  the  most  complete  embodiment  of 
all  that  is  great,  all  that  is  lovable,  in  the  English  temper. 
He  combined  as  no  other  man  has  ever  combined  its  prac- 
tical energy,  its  patient  and  enduring  force,  its  profound 
sense  of  duty,  the  reserve  and  self-control  that  steadies  in 
it  a  wide  outlook  and  a  restless  daring,  its  temperance  and 
fairness,  its  frank  genialit}",  its  sensitiveness  to  action,  its 
poetic  tenderness,  its  deep  and  passionate  religion.  Reli- 
gion indeed  was  the  groundwork  of  JElfred's  character. 
His  temper  was  instinct  with  piety.  Everywhere  through- 
out his  writings  that  remain  to  us  the  name  of  God,  the 
thought  of  God,  stir  him  to  outbursts  of  ecstatic  adoration. 
But  he  was  no  mere  saint.  He  felt  none  of  that  scorn  of 
the  world  about  him  which  drove  the  nobler  souls  of  his 
day  to  monastery  or  hermitage.  Vexed  as  he  was  by  sick- 
ness and  constant  pain,  his  temper  took  no  touch  of  asceti- 
cism. His  rare  geniality,  a  peculiar  elasticity  and  mobil- 
ity of  nature,  gave  color  and  charm  to  his  life.  A  sunny 
frankness  and  openness  of  spirit  breathes  in  the  pleasant 


84  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

chat  of  his  books,  and  what  he  was  in  his  books  he  showed 
himself  in  his  daily  converse.  JElired  was  in  truth  an 
artist,  and  both  the  lights  and  shadows  of  his  life  were 
those  of  the  artistic  temperament.  His  love  of  books,  his 
love  of  strangers,  his  questionings  of  travellers  and  schol- 
ars, betray  an  imaginative  restlessness  that  longs  to  break 
out  of  the  narrow  world  of  experience  which  hemmed  him 
in.  At  one  time  he  jots  down  news  of  a  voyage  to  the 
unknown  seas  of  the  north.  At  another  he  listens  to  tid- 
ings which  his  envoys  bring  back  from  the  churches  of 
Malabar.  And  side  by  side  with  this  restless  outlook  of 
the  artistic  nature  he  showed  its  tenderness  and  suscepti- 
bility, its  vivid  apprehension  of  unseen  danger,  its  craving 
for  affection,  its  sensitiveness  to  wrong.  It  was  with  him- 
self rather  than  with  his  reader  that  he  communed  as 
thoughts  of  the  foe  without,  of  ingratitude  and  opposition 
within,  broke  the  calm  pages  of  Gregory  or  Boethius. 
"  Oh,  what  a  happy  man  was  he,"  he  cries  once,  "  that  man 
that  had  a  naked  sword  hanging  over  his  head  from  a  sin- 
gle thread ;  so  as  to  me  it  always  did !"  "  Desirest  thou 
power?"  he  asks  at  another  time.  "But  thou  shalt  never 
obtain  it  without  sorrows — sorrows  from  strange  folk,  and 
yet  keener  sorrows  from  thine  own  kindred."  "  Hardship 
and  sorrow !"  he  breaks  out  again,  "  not  a  king  but  would 
wish  to  be  without  these  if  he  could.  But  I  know  that  he 
cannot!"  The  loneliness  which  breathes  in  words  like 
these  has  often  begotten  in  great  rulers  a  cynical  contempt 
of  men  and  the  judgments  of  men.  But  cynicism  found 
no  echo  in  the  large  and  sympathetic  temper  of  -(Alfred. 
He  not  only  longed  for  the  love  of  his  subjects,  but  for  the 
remembrance  of  "  generations"  to  come.  Nor  did  his  inner 
gloom  or  anxiety  check  for  an  instant  his  vivid  and  ver- 
satile activity.  To  the  scholars  he  gathered  round  him  he 
seemed  the  very  type  of  a  scholar,  snatching  every  hour 
he  could  find  to  read  or  listen  to  books  read  to  him.  The 
singers  of  his  court  found  in  him  a  brother  singer,  gath- 
ering the  old  songs  of  his  people  to  teach  them  to  his  chil- 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  85 

dren,  breaking  his  renderings  from  the  Latin  with  simple 
verse,  solacing  himself  in  hours  of  depression  with  the 
music  of  the  Psalms.  He  passed  from  court  and  study  to 
plan  buildings  and  instruct  craftsmen  in  gold-work,  to 
teach  even  falconers  and  dog-keepers  their  business.  But 
all  this  versatility  and  ingenuity  was  controlled  by  a  cool 
good  sense.  Alfred  was  a  thorough  man  of  business.  He 
was  careful  of  detail,  laborious,  methodical.  He  carried 
in  his  bosom  a  little  handbook  in  which  he  noted  things  as 
they  struck  him — now  a  bit  of  family  genealogy,  now  a 
prayer,  now  such  a  story  as  that  of  Ealdhelm  playing  min- 
strel on  the  bridge.  Each  hour  of  the  day  had  its  appointed 
task ;  there  was  the  same  order  in  the  division  of  his  rev- 
enue and  in  the  arrangement  of  his  court. 

Wide  however  and  various  as  was  the  King's  temper, 
its  range  was  less  wonderful  than  its  harmony.  Of  the 
narrowness,  of  the  want  of  proportion,  of  the  predominance 
of  one  quality  over  another  which  goes  commonly  with  an 
intensity  of  moral  purpose  Alfred  showed  not  a  trace. 
Scholar  and  soldier,  artist  and  man  of  business,  poet  and 
saint,  his  character  kept  that  perfect  balance  which  charms 
us  in  no  other  Englishman  save  Shakspere.  But  full 
and  harmonious  as  his  temper  was,  it  was  the  temper  of  a 
king.  Every  power  was  bent  to  the  work  of  rule.  His 
practical  energy  found  scope  for  itself  in  the  material  and 
administrative  restoration  of  the  wasted  land.  His  intel- 
lectual activity  breathed  fresh  life  into  education  and  liter- 
ature. His  capacity  for  inspiring  trust  and  affection  drew 
the  hearts  of  Englishmen  to  a  common  centre,  and  began 
the  upbuilding  of  a  new  England.  And  all  was  guided, 
controlled,  ennobled  by  a  single  aim.  "  So  long  as  I  have 
lived,"  said  the  King  as  life  closed  about  him,  "I  have 
striven  to  live  worthily."  Little  by  little  men  came  to 
know  what  such  a  life  of  worthiness  meant.  Little  by  lit- 
tle they  came  to  recognize  in  Alfred  a  ruler  of  higher  and 
nobler  stamp  than  the  world  had  seen.  Never  had  it  seen 
a  King  who  lived  solely  for  the  good  of  his  people.     Never 


8G  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I 

had  it  seen  a  ruler  who  set  aside  every  personal  aim  to  de- 
vote himself  solely  to  the  welfare  of  those  whom  he  ruled. 
li  was  tliis  grand  self-mastery  that  gave  him  his  power 
over  the  men  about  him.  Warrior  and  conqueror  as  he 
was,  they  saw  him  set  aside  at  thirty  the  warrior's  dream 
of  conquest ;  and  the  self -renouncement  of  Wedmore  struck 
the  key-note  of  his  reign.  But  still  more  is  it  this  height 
and  singleness  of  purpose,  this  absolute  concentration  of  the 
noblest  faculties  to  the  noblest  aim,  that  lifts  Alfred  out 
of  the  narrow  bounds  of  Wessex.  If  the  sphere  of  his 
action  seems  too  small  to  justify  the  comparison  of  him 
with  the  few  whom  the  world  owns  as  its  greatest  men, 
he  rises  to  their  level  in  the  moral  grandeur  of  his  life. 
And  it  is  this  which  has  hallowed  his  memory  among  his 
own  English  people.  "I  desire,"  said  the  King  in  some 
of  his  latest  words,  "  I  desire  to  leave  to  the  men  that 
come  after  me  a  remembrance  of  me  in  good  works."  His 
aim  has  been  more  than  fulfilled.  His  memory  has  come 
down  to  us  with  a  living  distinctness  through  the  mists  of 
exaggeration  and  legend  which  time  gathered  round  it. 
The  instinct  of  the  people  has  clung  to  him\vith  a  singular 
affection.  The  love  which  he  won  a  thousand  years  ago 
has  lingered  round  his  name  from  that  day  to  this.  While 
every  other  name  of  those  earlier  times  has  all  but  faded 
from  the  recollection  of  Englishmen,  that  of  -(Alfred  re- 
mains familiar  to  every  English  child. 

The  secret  of  -(Alfred's  government  lay  in  his  own  vivid 
energy.  He  could  hardly  have  chosen  braver  or  more  ac- 
tive helpers  than  those  whom  he  employed  both  in  his  po- 
litical and  in  his  educational  efforts.  The  children  whom 
he  trained  to  rule  proved  the  ablest  rulers  of  their  time. 
But  at  the  outset  of  his  reign  he  stood  alone,  and  what  work 
was  to  be  done  was  done  by  the  King  himself.  His  first  ef- 
forts were  directed  to  the  material  restoration  of  his  realm. 
The  burnt  and  wasted  country  saw  its  towns  built  again, 
forts  erected  in  positions  of  danger,  new  abbeys  founded, 
the  machinery  of  justice  and  government  restored,  the  laws 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  87 

—         -  -  J,  

codified  and  amended.  Still  more  strenuous  were  Alfred's 
efforts  for  its  moral  and  intellectual  restoration.  Even  in 
Mercia  and  Northumbria  the  pirates'  sword  had  left  few 
survivors  of  the  schools  of  Ecgberht  or  Bseda,  and  matters 
were  even  worse  in  Wessex  which  had  been  as  yet  the 
most  ignorant  of  the  English  kingdoms.  "  When  I  began 
to  reign,"  said  Alfred,  "I  cannot  remember  one  priest 
south  of  the  Thames  who  could  render  his  service-book 
ink)  English."  For  instructors  indeed  he  could  find  only 
a  few  Mercian  prelates  and  priests  with  one  Welsh  bishop, 
Asser,  "  Formerly,"  the  King  writes  bitterly,  "  men  came 
hither  from  foreign  lands  to  seek  for  instruction,  and  now 
when  we  desire  it  we  can  only  obtain  it  from  abroad." 
But  his  mind  was  far  from  being  prisoned  within  his  own 
island.  He  sent  a  Norwegian  ship-master  to  explore  the 
White  Sea,  and  Wulf stan  to  trace  the  coast  of  Esthonia ; 
envoys  bore  his  presents  to  the  churches  of  India  and  Jerusa- 
lem, and  an  annual  mission  carried  Peter's-pence  to  Rome. 
But  it  was  with  the  Franks  that  his  intercourse  was  clos- 
est, and  it  was  from  them  that  he  drew  the  scholars  to  aid 
him  in  his  work  of  education.  A  scholar  named  Grim- 
bald  came  from  St.  Omer  to  preside  over  his  new  abbey  at 
Winchester;  and  John,  the  old  Saxon,  was  fetched  from 
the  abbey  of  Corbey  to  rule  a  monastery  and  school  that 
.i^lfred's  gratitude  for  his  deliverance  from  the  Danes 
raised  in  the  marshes  of  Athelney.  The  real  work,  how- 
ever, to  be  done  was  done,  not  by  these  teachers,  but  by  the 
King  himself.  .i3Illfred  established  a  school  for  the  j^oung 
nobles  in  his  court,  and  it  was  to  the  need  of  books  for 
these  scholars  in  their  own  tongue  that  we  owe  his  most 
remarkable  literary  effort.  He  took  his  books  as  he  found 
them — they  were  the  popular  manuals  of  his  age — the 
Consolation  of  Boethius,  the  Pastoral  of  Pope  Gregory, 
the  compilation  of  Orosius,  then  the  one  accessible  hand- 
book of  universal  history,  and  the  history  of  his  own  people 
by  Bseda.  He  translated  these  works  into  English,  but 
he  was  far  more  than  a  translator,  he  was  an  editor  for 


88  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 

the  people.  Here  he  omitted,  there  he  expanded.  He  en- 
riched Orosius  by  a  sketch  of  the  new  geographical  dis- 
coveries in  the  North.  He  gave  a  West-Saxon  form  to 
his  selections  from  Baeda.  In  one  place  he  stops  to  explain 
his  theory  of  government,  his  wish  for  a  thicker  population, 
his  conception  of  national  welfare  as  consisting  in  a  due 
balance  of  priest,  soldier,  and  churl.  The  mention  of  Nero 
spurs  him  to  an  outbreak  on  the  abuses  of  power.  The 
cold  Providence  of  Boethius  gives  way  to  an  enthusiastic 
acknowledgment  of  the  goodness  of  God.  As  he  writes, 
his  large-hearted  nature  flings  off  its  royal  mantle,  and  he 
talks  as  a  man  to  men.  "Do  not  blame  me,"  he  prays 
with  a  charming  simplicity,  "if  any  know  Latin  better 
than  I,  for  every  man  must  say  what  he  says  and  do  what 
he  does  according  to  his  abilit3\"  But  simple  as  was  his 
aim,  Alfred  changed  the  whole  front  of  our  literature.  Be- 
fore him,  England  possessed  in  her  own  tongue  one  great 
poem  and  a  train  of  ballads  and  battle-songs.  Prose  she 
had  none.  The  mighty  roll  of  the  prose  books  that  fill  her 
libraries  begins  with  the  translations  of  -^Elf  red,  and  above 
all  with  the  chronicle  of  his  reign.  It  seems  likely  that 
the  King's  rendering  of  Bgeda's  history  gave  the  first  im- 
pulse toward  the  compilation  of  what  is  known  as  the  Eng- 
lish or  Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,  which  was  certainly  thrown 
into  its  present  form  during  his  reign.  The  meagre  lists 
of  the  Kings  of  Wessex  and  the  bishops  of  Winchester, 
which  had  been  preserved  from  older  times,  were  roughly 
expanded  into  a  national  history  by  insertions  from  Bseda : 
but  it  is  when  it  reaches  the  reign  of  -<Elfred  that  the 
chronicle  suddenly  widens  into  the  vigorous  narrative,  full 
of  life  and  originality,  that  marks  the  gift  of  a  new  power 
to  the  English  tongue.  Varying  as  it  does  from  age  to 
age  in  historic  value,  it  remains  the  first  vernacular  his- 
tory of  any  Teutonic  people,  and  save  for  the  Gothic  trans> 
lations  of  Ulfilas,  the  earliest  and  most  venerable  monu- 
ment of  Teutonic  prose. 

But  all  this  literary  activity  was  only  a  part  of  that  gen- 


ALFRED    THE    GREAT 
After  a  Print  by  Vertue 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  89 


eral  upbuilding  of  Wessex  by  which  Alfred  was  preparing 
for  a  fresh  contest  with  the  stranger.     He  kiiew  that  the 
actual  winning  back  of  the  Danelagh  must  be  a  work  of 
the  sword,  and  through  these  long  years  of  peace  he  was 
busy  with  the  creation  of  such  a  force  as  might  match  that 
of  the  Northmen.     A  fleet  grew  out  of  the  little  squadron 
which  Alfred  had  been  forced  to  man  with  Frisian  sea- 
men.      The  national  fyrd  or  levy  of  all  freemen  at  the 
King's   call  was  reorganized.     It  was  now  divided  into 
two  halves,  one  of  which  served  in  the  field  while  the  other 
guarded  its  own  burhs  and  townships  and  served  to  re- 
lieve its  fellow  when  the  men's  forty  days  of  service  were 
ended.     A  more  disciplined  military  force  was  provided 
by  subjecting  all  owners  of  five  hides  of  land  to  thegn-ser- 
vice,  a  step  which  recognized  the  change  that  had  now 
substituted  the  thegn  for  the  eorl  and  in  which  we  see  the 
beginning  of  a  feudal  system.     How  effective  these  meas- 
ures were  was  seen  when  the  new  resistance  they  met  on 
the  Continent  drove  the  Northmen  to  a  fresh  attack  on 
Britain.     In  893  a  large  fleet  steered  for  the  Andredsweald, 
while  the  sea-king  Hasting  entered  the  Thames.     Alfred 
held  both  at  bay  through  the  year  till  the  men  of  the  Dane- 
lagh rose  at  their  comrades'  call.     Wessex  stood  again 
front  to  front  with  the  Northmen.     But  the  King's  meas- 
ures had  made  the  realm  strong  enough  to  set  aside  its  old 
policy  of  defence  for  one  of  vigorous  attack.     His  son  Ead- 
ward  and  his  son-in-law  ^thelred,  whom  he  had  set  as  eal- 
dorman  over  what  remained  of  Mercia,  showed  themselves 
as  skilful  and  active  as  the  King.     The  aim  of  the  North- 
men was  to  rouse  again  the  hostility  of  the  Welsh,  but 
while  Alfred  held  Exeter  against  their  fleet  Eadward  and 
JEthelred  caught  their  army  near  the  Severn  and  over- 
threw it  with  a  vast  slaughter  at  Buttington.     The  de- 
struction of  their  camp  on  the  Lea  by  the  united  English 
forces  ended  the  war;   in  897  Hasting  again  withdrew 
across  the  Channel,  and  the  Danelagh  made  peace.     It  was 
with  the  peace  he  had  won  still  about  him  that  Alfred 


90  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGIJSH  PEOPLE.        [Book  1. 


died  in  901,  and  warrior  as  his  son  Eadward  had  shown 
himself,  he  chmg  to  his  father's  policy  of  rest.  It  was  not 
till  910  that  a  fresh  rising  of  the  Northmen  forced  Alfred's 
children  to  gird  themselves  to  the  conquest  of  the  Dane- 
lagh. 

While  Eadward  bridled  East-Anglia  his  sister  ^theh 
fifed,  in  whose  hands  ^thelred's  death  left  English  Mer- 
cia,  attacked  the  "Five  Boroughs,"  a  rude  confederacy 
which  had  taken  the  place  of  the  older  Mercian  kingdom. 
Derby  represented  the  original  Mercia  on  the  upper  Trent, 
Lincoln  the  Lindiswaras,  Leicester  the  Middle-English, 
Stamford  the  province  of  the  Gyrwas,  Nottingham  prob- 
ably that  of  the  Southumbrians.  Each  of  these  "  Five 
Boroughs"  seems  to  have  been  ruled  by  its  earl  with  his 
separate  "  host ;"  within  each  twelve  "  lawmen"  adminis- 
tered Danish  law,  while  a  common  justice-court  existed 
for  the  whole  confederacy.  In  her  attack  on  this  power- 
ful league  ^thelflted  abandoned  the  older  strategy  of  battle 
and  raid  for  that  of  siege  and  fortress-building.  Advanc- 
ing along  the  line  of  Trent,  she  fortified  Tamworth  and 
Stafford  on  its  headwaters ;  when  a  rising  in  Gwent  called 
her  back  to  the  Welsh  border,  her  army  stormed  Breck- 
nock; and  its  king  no  sooner  fled  for  shelter  to  the  North- 
men in  whose  aid  he  had  risen  than  ^thelflsed  at  once 
closed  on  Derby.  Raids  from  Middle  England  failed  to 
draw  the  Lady  of  Mercia  from  her  prey ;  and  Derby  was 
hardly  her  own  when,  turning  southward,  she  forced  the 
surrender  of  Leicester.  The  brilliancy  of  his  sister's  ex- 
ploits had  as  yet  eclipsed  those  of  the  King,  but  the  son  of 
Alfred  was  a  vigorous  and  active  ruler ;  he  had  repulsed 
a  dangerous  inroad  of  the  Northmen  from  France,  sum- 
moned no  doubt  by  the  cry  of  distress  from  their  brethren 
in  England,  and  had  bridled  East-Anglia  to  the  south  by 
the  erection  of  forts  at  Hertford  and  Witham.  On  the 
death  of  ^thelflsed  in  918  he  came  boldly  to  the  front. 
Annexing  Mercia  to  Wessex,  and  thus  gathering  the  whole 
strength  of  the  kingdom  into  ^his  single  hand,  he  under- 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  91 

took  the  systematic  reduction  of  the  Danelagh.  South  of 
the  Middle  English  and  the  Fens  lay  a  tract  watered  by 
the  Ouse  and  the  Nen — originally  the  district  of  a  tribe 
known  as  the  South-English,  and  now,  like  the  Five  Bor- 
oughs of  the  north,  grouped  round  the  towns  of  Bedford, 
Huntingdon,  and  Northampton.  The  reduction  of  these 
was  followed  by  that  of  East- Anglia ;  the  Northmen  of  the 
Fens  submitted  with  Stamford,  the  Southumbrians  with 
Nottingham.  Eadward's  Mercian  troops  had  already 
seized  Manchester;  he  himself  was  preparing  to  complete 
his  conquests,  when  in  924  the  whole  of  the  North  sud- 
denly laid  itself  at  his  feet.  Not  merel}^  Northumbria  but 
the  Scots  and  the  Britons  of  Strathclyde  "chose  him  to 
father  and  lord." 

The  triumph  was  his  last.  Eadward  died  in  925,  but 
the  reign  of  his  son  ^thelstan,  .^S^lfred's  golden-haired 
grandson  whom  the  King  had  girded  as  a  child  with  a 
swoi'd  set  in  a  golden  scabbard  and  a  gem-studded  belt, 
proved  even  moi-e  glorious  than  his  own.  In  spite  of  its 
submission  the  North  had  still  to  be  won.  Dread  of  the 
Northmen  had  drawn  Scot  and  Cumbrian  to  their  ac- 
knowledgment of  Eadward's  overlordship,  but  ^thelstan 
no  sooner  incorporated  Northumbria  with  his  dominions 
than  dread  of  Wessex  took  the  place  of  dread  of  the  Dane- 
lagh. The  Scot  King  Constantino  organized  a  league  of 
Scot,  Cumbrian,  and  Welshman  with  the  Northmen.  The 
league  was  broken  by  ^thelstan's  rapid  action  in  926;  the 
North- Welsh  were  forced  to  pay  annual  tribute,  to  march 
in  his  armies,  and  to  attend  his  councils;  the  West-Welsh 
of  Cornwall  were  reduced  to  a  like  vassalage,  and  finally 
driven  from  Exeter,  which  they  had  shared  till  then  with 
its  English  inhabitants.  But  ten  years  later  the  same  league 
called  .i32thelstan  again  to  tlie  North ;  and  though  Constan- 
tino was  punished  by  an  army  which  wasted  his  kingdom 
while  a  fleet  ravaged  its  coasts  to  Caithness,  the  English 
army  had  no  sooner  withdrawn  than  Northumbria  rose  in 
937  at  the  appearance  of  a  fleet  of  pirates  from  Ireland  un- 


92  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

der  the  sea-kiug  Anlaf  in  the  Humber.  Scot  and  Cumbrian 
fought  beside  the  Northmen  against  the  West-Saxon  King; 
but  his  victory  at  Brunanburh  crushed  the  confederacy 
and  won  peace  till  his  death.  His  son  Eadmund  was  but 
a  boy  at  his  accession  in  940,  and  the  North  again  rose  in 
revolt.  The  men  of  the  Five  Boroughs  joined  their  kins- 
men in  Northumbria ;  once  Eadmund  was  driven  to  a  peace 
which  left  him  King  but  south  of  the  Watling  Street ;  and 
only  3-ears  of  hard  fighting  again  laid  the  Danelagh  at  his 
feet. 

But  policy  was  now  to  supplement  the  work  of  the 
sword.  The  completion  of  the  West- Saxon  realm  was  in 
fact  reserved  for  the  hands,  not  of  a  king  or  warrior,  but 
of  a  priest.  Dunstan  stands  first  in  the  line  of  ecclesias- 
tical statesmen  who  counted  among  them  Lanfranc  and 
Wolsey  and  ended  in  Laud.  He  is  still  more  remarkable 
in  himself,  in  his  own  vivid  personality  after  eight  centu- 
ries of  revolution  and  change.  He  was  bom  in  the  little 
hamlet  of  Glastonbur}',  the  home  of  his  father,  Heorstan, 
a  man  of  wealth  and  brother  of  the  bishops  of  Wells  and 
of  Winchester.  It  must  have  been  in  his  father's  hall  that 
the  fair,  diminutive  bo}',  with  his  scant  but  beautiful  hair, 
caught  his  love  for  "the  vain  songs  of  heathendom,  the 
trifling  legends,  the  funeral  chaunts,"  which  afterward 
roused  against  him  the  charge  of  sorcery.  Thence  too  he 
might  have  derived  his  passionate  love  of  music,  and  his 
custom  of  carrying  his  harp  in  hand  on  journey  or  visit. 
Wandering  scholars  of  Ireland  had  left  their  books  in  the 
monastery  of  Glastonbury,  as  they  left  them  along  the 
Rhine  and  the  Danube;  and  Dunstan  plunged  into  the 
study  of  sacred  and  profane  letters  till  his  brain  broke  down 
in  delirium.  So  famous  became  his  knowledge  in  the 
neighborhood  that  news  of  it  reached  the  court  of  ^thel- 
stan,  but  his  appearance  there  was  the  signal  for  a  burst 
of  ill-will  among  the  courtiers.  They  drove  him  from  the 
king's  train,  threw  him  from  his  horse  as  he  passed  through 
the  marshes,  and  with  the  wild  passion  of  their  age  tram- 


Chap.  3.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  93 

pled  him  under  foot  in  the  mire.  The  outrage  ended  in 
fever,  and  Dunstan  rose  from  his  sick-bed  a  monk.  But 
the  monastic  profession  was  then  little  more  than  a  vow 
of  celibacy,  and  his  devotion  took  no  ascetic  turn.  His 
nature  in  fact  was  sunny,  versatile,  artistic ;  full  of  strong 
affections,  and  capable  of  inspiring  others  with  affections 
as  strong.  Quick-witted,  of  tenacious  memory,  a  ready 
and  fluent  speaker,  gay  and  genial  in  address,  an  artist, 
a  musician,  he  was  at  the  same  time  an  indefatigable 
worker  at  books,  at  building,  at  handicraft.  As  his  sphere 
began  to  widen  we  see  him  followed  by  a  train  of  pupils, 
busy  with  literature,  writing,  harping,  painting,  design- 
ing. One  morning  a  lady  summons  him  to  her  house  to 
design  a  robe  which  she  is  embroidering,  and  as  he  bends 
with  her  maidens  over  their  toil  his  harp  hung  upon  the 
wall  sounds  without  mortal  touch  tones  which  the  excited 
ears  around  frame  into  a  joyous  antiphon. 

From  this  scholar  life  Dunstan  was  called  to  a  wider 
sphere  of  activity  by  the  accession  of  Eadmund.  But  the 
old  jealousies  revived  at  his  reappearance  at  court,  and 
counting  the  game  lost  Dunstan  prepared  again  to  with- 
draw. The  King  had  spent  the  day  in  the  chase ;  the  red 
deer  which  he  was  pursuing  dashed  over  Cheddar  cliffs, 
and  his  horse  only  checked  itself  on  the  brink  of  the  ravine 
at  the  moment  when  Eadmund  in  the  bitterness  of  death 
was  repenting  of  his  injustice  to  Dunstan.  He  was  at  once 
summoned  on  the  King's  return.  "Saddle  your  horse," 
said  Eadmund,  "and  ride  with  me."  The  royal  train 
swept  over  the  marshes  to  his  home ;  and  the  King,  be- 
stowing on  him  the  kiss  of  peace,  seated  him  in  the  abbot's 
chair  as  Abbot  of  Glastonbury.  Dunstan  became  one  of 
Eadmund 's  councillors  and  his  hand  was  seen  in  the  set- 
tlement of  the  North.  It  was  the  hostility  of  the  states 
around  it  to  the  West-Saxon  rule  which  had  roused  so  often 
revolt  in  the  Danelagh;  but  from  this  time  we  hear  noth- 
ing more  of  the  hostility  of  Bernicia,  while  Strathclyde 
was  conquered  by  Eadmund  and  turned  adroitly  to  account 


94  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 

ill  winning  over  the  Scots  to  his  cause.  The  greater  part 
of  it  was  granted  to  their  King  Malcolm  on  terms  that 
he  should  be  Eadmund's  fellow- worker  by  sea  and  land. 
The  league  of  Scot  and  Briton  was  thus  finally  broken  up, 
and  the  fidelity  of  the  Scots  secured  by  their  need  of  help 
in  holding  down  their  former  ally.  The  settlement  was 
soon  troubled  by  the  young  King's  death.  As  he  feasted 
at  Pucklechurch  in  the  May  of  946,  Leofa,  a  robber  whom 
Eadmund  had  banished  from  the  land,  entered  the  hall, 
seated  himself  at  the  royal  board,  and  drew  sword  on  the 
cup-bearer  when  he  bade  him  retire.  The  King  sprang 
in  wrath  to  his  thegn's  aid,  and  seizing  Leofa  by  the  hair, 
flung  him  to  the  ground ;  but  in  the  struggle  the  robber 
drove  his  dagger  to  Eadmund's  heart.  His  death  at  once 
stirred  fresh  troubles  in  the  North;  the  Danelagh  rose 
against  his  brother  and  successor,  Eadred,  and  some  years 
of  hard  fighting  were  needed  before  it  was  again  driven  to 
own  the  English  supremacy.  But  with  its  submission  in 
954  the  work  of  conquest  was  done.  Dogged  as  his  fight 
had  been,  the  Northman  at  last  owned  himself  beaten. 
From  the  moment  of  Eadred's  final  triumph  all  resistance 
came  to  an  end.  The  Danelagh  ceased  to  be  a  force  in 
English  politics.  North  might  part  anew  from  South ; 
men  of  Yoikshire  might  again  cross  swords  with  men  of 
Hampshire ,  but  their  strife  was  henceforth  a  local  strife 
between  men  of  the  same  people ;  it  was  a  strife  of  En- 
glishmen with  Englishmen,  and  not  of  Englishmen  with 
Northmen. 


y 


CHAPTER  IV. 

FEUDALISM  AND  THE  MONARCHY. 
954—1071. 

The  fierceness  of  the  Northman's  onset  had  hidden  the 
real  character  'of  his  attack.  To  the  men  who  first  fronted 
the  pirates  it  seemed  as  though  the  story  of  the  world  had 
gone  back  to  the  days  when  the  German  barbarians  first 
broke  in  upon  the  civilized  world.  It  was  so  above  all  in 
Britain.  All  that  tradition  told  of  the  Englishmen's  own 
attack  on  the  island  was  seen  in  the  Northmen's  attack 
on  it.  Boats  of  marauders  from  the  northern  seas  again 
swarmed  off  the  British  coast;  church  and  town  were 
again  the  special  object  of  attack ;  the  invaders  again  set- 
tled on  the  conquered  soil;  heathendom  again  proved 
stronger  than  the  faith  of  Christ.  But  the  issues  of  the 
two  attacks  showed  the  mighty  difference  between  them. 
When  the  English  ceased  from  their  onset  upon  Roman 
Britain  Roman  Britain  had  disappeared,  and  a  new  people 
of  conquerors  stood  alone  on  the  conquered  land.  The 
Northern  storm  on  the  other  hand  left  land,  people,  gov- 
ernment unchanged.  England  remained  a  country  of  Eng- 
lishmen. The  conquerors  sank  into  the  mass  of  the  con- 
quered, and  Woden  yielded  without  a  struggle  to  Christ. 
The  strife  between  Briton  and  Englishman  was  in  fact  a 
strife  between  men  of  different  races,  while  the  strife  be- 
tween Northman  and  Englishman  was  a  strife  between 
men  whose  race  was  the  same.  The  followers  of  Hengest 
or  of  Ida  were  men  utterly  alien  from  the  life  of  Britain, 
strange  to  its  arts,  its  culture,  its  wealth,  as  they  were 
strange  to  the  social  degradation  which  Rome  had  brought 
on  its  province.     But  the  Northman  was  little  more  than 


90  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 

an  Englishman  bringing  back  to  an  England  which  had 
drifted  far  from  its  origin  the  barbaric  life  of  its  earliest 
forefathers.  Nowhere  throughout  Europe  was  the  fight 
BO  fierce,  because  nowhere  else  were  the  fighters  men  of 
one  blood  and  one  speech.  But  just  for  this  reason  the 
union  of  the  combatants  was  nowhere  so  peaceful  or  so 
complete.  The  victory  of  the  house  of  Alfred  only  has- 
tened a  process  of  fusion  which  was  already  going  on. 
From  the  first  moment  of  his  settlement  in  the  Danelagh 
the  Northman  had  been  passing  into  a  Englishman.  The 
settlers  were  few;  they  were  scattered  among  a  large 
population;  in  tongue,  in  manner,  in  institutions  there 
was  little  to  distinguish  them  from  the  men  among  whom 
they  dwelt.  Moreover  their  national  temper  helped  on  the 
process  of  assimilation.  Even  in  France,  where  difference 
of  language  and  difference  of  custom  seemed  to  interpose 
an  impassable  barrier  between  the  Northman  settled  in 
Normandy  and  his  neighbors,  he  was  fast  becoming  a 
Frenchman.  In  England,  where  no  such  barriers  existed, 
the  assimilation  was  even  quicker.  The  two  people  soon 
became  confounded.  In  a  few  years  a  Northman  in  blood 
was  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  another  Northman  in 
blood  was  Archbishop  of  York. 

The  fusion  might  have  been  delayed  if  not  wholly  averted 
by  continued  descents  from  the  Scandinavian  homeland. 
But  with  Eadred's  reign  the  long  attack  which  the  North- 
man had  directed  against  western  Christendom  came,  for 
a  while  at  least,  to  an  end.  On  the  world  which  it  assailed 
its  results  had  been  immense.  It  had  utterly  changed  the 
face  of  the  west.  The  empire  of  Ecgberht,  the  empire  of 
Charles  the  Great,  had  been  alike  dashed  to  pieces.  But 
break  and  change  as  it  might,  Christendom  had  held  the 
Northmen  at  bay.  The  Scandinavian  power  which  had 
grown  up  on  the  western  seas  had  disappeared  like  a 
dream.  In  Ireland  the  Northman's  rule  had  dwindled  to 
the  holding  of  a  few  coast  towns.  In  France  his  settle- 
ments had  shrunk  to  the  one  settlement  of  Normandy.     In 


dHAP.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  97 


England  every  Northman  was  a  subject  of  the  English 
King.  Even  the  Empire  of  the  Seas  had  passed  from  the 
Sea- Kings'  hands.  It  was  an  English  and  not  a  Scandi- 
navian fleet  that  for  fifty  years  to  come  held  mastery  in 
the  English  and  the  Irish  Channels.  With  Eadred's  vic- 
tory in  fact  the  struggle  seemed  to  have  reached  its  close. 
Stray  pirate  boats  still  hung  off  headland  and  coast ;  stray 
vikings  still  shoved  out  in  spring-tide  to  gather  booty. 
But  for  nearly  half-a-century  to  come  no  great  pirate  fleet 
made  its  way  to  the  west,  or  landed  on  the  shores  of  Brit- 
ain. The  energies  of  the  Northmen  were  in  fact  absorbed 
through  these  years  in  the  political  changes  of  Scandina- 
via itself.  The  old  isolation  of  fiord  from  fiord  and  dale 
from  dale  was  breaking  down.  The  little  commonwealths 
which  had  held  so  jealously  aloof  from  each  other  were 
being  drawn  together  whether  they  would  or  no.  In  each 
of  the  three  regions  of  the  north  great  kingdoms  were 
growing  up.  In  Sweden  King  Eric  made  himself  lord  of 
the  petty  states  about  him.  In  Denmark  King  Gorm  built 
up  in  the  same  way  a  monarchy  of  the  Danes.  Norway, 
though  it  lingered  long,  followed  at  last  in  the  same  track. 
Legend  told  how  one  of  its  many  rulers,  Harald  of  West- 
fold,  sent  his  men  to  bring  him  Gytha  of  Hordaland,  a 
girl  he  had  chosen  for  wife,  and  how  Gytha  sent  his  men 
back  again  with  taunts  at  his  petty  realm.  The  taunts 
went  home,  and  Harald  vowed  never  to  clip  or  comb  his 
hair  till  he  had  made  all  Norway  his  own.  So  every 
springtide  came  war  and  hosting,  harrying  and  burning, 
till  a  great  fight  at  Hafursfiord  settled  the  matter,  and 
Harald  "Ugly- Head,"  as  men  called  him  while  the  strife 
lasted,  was  free  to  shear  his  locks  again  and  became  Harald 
"  Fair-Hair."  The  Northmen  loved  no  master,  and  a  great 
multitude  fled  out  of  the  country,  some  pushing  as  far  as 
Iceland  and  colonizing  it,  some  swarming  to  the  Orkneys 
and  Hebrides  till  Harald  harried  them  out  again  and  the 
sea-kings  sailed  southward  to  join  Guthrum's  host  in  the 
Rhine  country  or  follow  Rolf  to  his  fights  on  the  Seine. 
Vol.  L— 7 


98  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 

But  little  by  little  the  land  settled  down  into  order,  and 
the  three  Scandinavian  realms  gathered  strength  for  new 
efforts  which  were  to  leave  their  mark  on  our  after-history. 

But  of  the  new  danger  which  threatened  it  in  this  union 
of  the  north  England  knew  little.  The  storm  seemed  to 
have  drifted  utterly  away;  and  the  land  passed  from  a 
hundred  years  of  ceaseless  conflict  into  a  time  of  peace. 
Here  as  elsewhere  the  Nortlunan  had  failed  in  his  purpose 
of  conquest ;  but  here  as  elsewhere  he  had  done  a  mighty 
work.  In  shattering  the  empire  of  Charles  the  Great  he 
had  given  birth  to  the  nations  of  modern  Europe.  In  his 
long  strife  with  Englishmen  he  had  created  an  English 
people.  The  national  union  which  had  been  brought  about 
for  a  moment  by  the  sword  of  Ecgberht  was  a  union  of 
sheer  force  which  broke  down  at  the  first  blow  of  the  sea- 
robbers.  The  black  boats  of  the  Northmen  were  so  many 
wedges  that  split  up  the  fabric  of  the  roughly-built  realm. 
But  the  very  agency  which  destroyed  the  new  England 
was  destined  to  bring  it  back  again,  and  to  breathe  into  it 
a  life  that  made  its  union  real.  The  peoples  who  had  so 
long  looked  on  each  other  as  enemies  found  themselves 
fronted  by  a  common  foe.  They  were  thrown  together  by 
a  common  danger  and  the  need  of  a  common  defence. 
This  common  faith  grew  into  a  national  bond  as  religion 
struggled  hand  in  hand  with  England  itself  against  the 
heathen  of  the  north.  They  recognized  a  common  king, 
as  a  common  struggle  changed  Alfred  and  his  sons  from 
mere  leaders  of  West  Saxons  into  leaders  of  all  English- 
men in  their  fight  with  the  stranger.  And  when  the  work 
which  .Alfred  set  his  house  to  do  was  done,  when  the  yoke 
of  the  Northman  was  lifted  from  the  last  of  his  conquests, 
Engle  and  Saxon,  Northumbrian  and  Mercian,  spent  with 
the  battle  for  a  common  freedom  and  a  common  country, 
knew  themselves  in  the  hour  of  their  deliverance  as  an 
English  people. 

The  new   people   found  its  centre  in  the  King.     The 
heightening  of  the  royal  power  was  a  direct  outcome  of 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  99 

the  war.  The  dying  out  of  other  royal  stocks  left  the 
house  of  Cerdic  the  one  line  of  hereditary  kingship.  But 
it  was  the  war  with  the  Northmen  that  raised  -Alfred  and 
his  sons  from  tribal  leaders  into  national  kings.  The  long 
series  of  triumphs  which  wrested  the  land  from  the  stranger 
begot  a  new  and  universal  lo^^alty ;  while  the  wider  do- 
minion which  their  success  bequeathed  removed  the  kings 
further  and  further  from  their  people,  lifted  them  higher 
and  higher  above  the  nobles,  and  clothed  them  more  and 
more  with  a  mysterious  dignity.  Above  all  the  religious 
character  of  the  war  against  the  Northmen  gave  a  relig- 
ious character  to  the  sovereigns  who  waged  it.  The 
king,  if  he  was  no  longer  sacred  as  the  son  of  Woden, 
became  yet  more  sacred  as  "the  Lord's  Anointed."  By 
the  very  fact  of  his  consecration  he  was  pledged  to  a  relig- 
ious rule,  to  justice,  mercy,  and  good  government;  but 
his  "  hallowing"  invested  him  also  with  a  power  drawn 
not  from  the  will  of  man  or  the  assent  of  his  subjects  but 
from  the  will  of  God,  and  treason  against  him  became  the 
worst  of  crimes.  Every  reign  lifted  the  sovereign  higher 
in  the  social  scale.  The  bishop,  once  ranked  equal  with 
him  in  value  of  life,  sank  to  the  level  of  the  ealdorman. 
The  ealdorman  himself,  once  the  hereditary  ruler  of  a 
smaller  state,  became  a  mere  delegate  of  the  national  king, 
with  an  authority  curtailed  in  every  shire  by  that  of  the 
royal  shire-reeves,  officers  despatched  to  levy  the  royal 
revenues  and  to  administer  the  royal  justice.  Among  the 
later  nobility  of  the  thegns  personal  service  with  such  a 
lord  was  held  not  to  degrade  but  to  ennoble.  "  Dish  -thegn" 
and  "bower-thegn,"  " house-thegn"  and  "horse- thegn" 
found  themselves  great  officers  of  state ;  and  the  develop- 
ment of  politics,  the  wider  extension  of  home  and  foreign 
affairs  were  already  transforming  these  royal  officers  into 
a  standing  council  or  ministry  for  the  transaction  of  the 
ordinary  administrative  business  and  the  reception  of  judi- 
cial appeals.  Such  a  ministry,  composed  of  thegns  or 
prelates  nominated  by  the  king,  and  constituting  in  itself 


100  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [BOOK  I. 

a  large  part  of  the  Witenagemote  when  that  assembly  was 
gathered  for  legislative  purposes,  drew  the  actual  control 
of  affairs  more  and  more  into  the  hands  of  the  sovereign 
himself. 

But  the  king's  power  was  still  a  personal  power.  He 
had  to  be  everywhere  and  to  see  for  himself  that  every- 
thing ho  willed  was  done.  The  royal  claims  lay  still  far 
ahead  of  the  real  strength  of  the  Crown.  There  was  a  want 
of  administrative  machinery  in  actual  connection  with  the 
government,  responsible  to  it,  drawing  its  force  directly 
from  it,  and  working  automatically  in  its  name  even  in 
moments  when  the  royal  power  was  itself  weak  or  waver- 
ing. The  Crown  was  strong  under  a  king  who  was  strong, 
whose  personal  action  was  felt  everywhere  throughout  the 
realm,  whose  dread  lay  on  every  reeve  and  ealdorman. 
But  with  a  weak  king  the  Crown  was  weak.  Ealdormen, 
provincial  witenagemotes,  local  jurisdictions,  ceased  to 
move  at  the  royal  bidding  the  moment  the  direct  royal 
pressure  was  loosened  or  removed.  Enfeebled  as  they 
were,  the  old  provincial  jealousies,  the  old  tendency  to 
severance  and  isolation  lingered  on  and  woke  afresh  when 
the  Crown  fell  to  a  nerveless  ruler  or  to  a  child.  And  at 
the  moment  we  have  reached  the  royal  power  and  the  na- 
tional union  it  embodied  had  to  battle  with  fresh  tenden- 
cies toward  national  disintegration  which  sprang  like 
itself  from  the  struggle  with  the  Northman.  The  ten- 
dency toward  personal  dependence  and  toward  a  social 
organization  based  on  personal  dependence  received  an 
overpowering  impulse  from  the  strife.  The  long  insecur- 
itj^  of  a  century  of  warfare  drove  the  ceorl,  the  free  tiller 
of  the  soil,  to  seek  protection  more  and  more  from  the 
thegn  beside  him.  The  freeman  "commended"  himself 
to  a  lord  who  promised  aid,  and  as  the  price  of  this  shelter 
he  surrendered  his  freehold  to  receive  it  back  as  a  fief  laden 
with  conditions  of  military  service.  The  principle  of  per- 
sonal allegiance  which  was  embodied  in  the  very  notion  of 
thegnhood,  itself  tended  to  widen  into  a  theory  of  general 


Chap.  4.]  EARIiY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  101 

dependence.  From  Alfred's  day  it  was  assumed  that  no 
man  could  exist  without  a  lord.  The  "  lordless  man"  be- 
came a  sort  of  outlaw  in  the  realm.  The  free  man,  the 
very  base  of  the  older  English  constitution,  died  down 
more  and  more  into  the  "villein,"  the  man  who  did  suit 
and  service  to  a  master,  who  followed  him  to  the  field, 
who  looked  to  his  court  for  justice,  who  rendered  days  of 
service  in  his  demesne.  The  same  tendencies  drew  the 
lesser  thegns  around  the  greater  nobles,  and  these  around 
the  provincial  ealdormen.  The  ealdormen  had  hardly  been 
dwarfed  into  lieutenants  of  the  national  sovereign  before 
they  again  began  to  rise  into  petty  kings,  and  in  the  cen- 
tury which  follows  we  see  Mercian  or  Northumbrian  thegns 
following  a  Mercian  or  Northumbrian  ealdorman  to  the 
field  though  it  were  against  the  lord  of  the  land.  Even 
the  constitutional  forms  which  sprang  from  the  old  Eng- 
lish freedom  tended  to  invest  the  higher  nobles  with  a 
commanding  power.  In  the  "  great  meeting"  of  the  Wite- 
nagemote  or  Assembly  of  the  Wise  lay  the  rule  of  the 
realm.  It  represented  the  whole  English  people,  as  the 
wise-moots  of  each  kingdom  represented  the  separate 
peoples  of  each ;  and  its  powers  were  as  supreme  in  the 
wider  field  as  theirs  in  the  narrower.  It  could  elect  or 
depose  the  King.  To  it  belonged  the  higher  justice,  the 
imposition  of  taxes,  the  making  of  laws,  the  conclusion  of 
treaties,  the  control  of  wars,  the  disposal  of  public  lar  ae^ 
the  appointment  of  great  ofiicers  of  state.  But  sucn  a 
meeting  necessarily  differed  greatly  in  constitution  from 
the  Witans  of  the  lesser  kingdoms.  The  individual  free- 
man, save  when  the  host  was  gathered  together,  could 
hardly  take  part  in  its  deliberations.  The  only  relic  of  its 
popular  character  lay  at  last  in  the  ring  of  citizens  who 
gathered  round  the  Wise  Men  at  London  or  Winchester, 
and  shouted  their  "aye"  or  "nay"  at  the  election  of  a 
king.  Distance  and  the  hardships  of  travel  made  the 
presence  of  the  lesser  thegns  as  rare  as  that  of  the  free- 
men ;  and  the  national  council  practically  shrank  into  a 


302  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  I. 


gathering  of  the  ealdormen,  the  bishops,  and  the  officers 
of  the  crown. 

The  old  English  democracy  had  thus  all  but  passed  into 
an  oligarchy  of  the  narrowest  kind.  The  feudal  move- 
ment which  in  other  lands  was  breaking  up  every  nation 
into  a  mass  of  loosely-knit  states  with  nobles  at  their  head 
who  owned  little  save  a  nominal  allegiance  to  their  king 
threatened  to  break  up  England  itself.  What  hindered  its 
triumph  was  the  power  of  the  Crown,  and  it  is  the  story 
of  this  struggle  between  the  monarchy  and  these  tenden- 
cies to  feudal  isolation  which  fills  the  period  between  the 
death  of  Eadred  and  the  conquest  of  the  Norman.  It  was 
a  struggle  which  England  shared  with  the  rest  of  the  west* 
em  world,  but  its  issue  here  was  a  peculiar  one.  In  other 
countries  feudalism  won  an  easy  victory  over  the  central 
government.  In  England  alone  the  monarchy  was  strong 
enough  to  hold  feudalism  at  bay.  Powerful  as  he  might 
be,  the  English  ealdorman  never  succeeded  in  becoming 
really  hereditary  or  independent  of  the  Crown.  Kings  as 
weak  as  ^thelred  could  drive  ealdormen  into  exile  and 
could  replace  them  by  fresh  nominees.  If  the  Witenage- 
mote  enabled  the  great  nobles  to  bring  their  power  to  bear 
directly  on  the  Crown,  it  preserved  at  any  rate  a  feeling 
of  national  unity  and  was  forced  to  back  the  Crown  against 
individual  revolt.  The  Church  too  never  became  feudal- 
ized The  bishop  clung  to  the  Crown,  and  the  bishop  re- 
mained a  great  social  and  political  power.  As  local  in 
area  as  the  ealdorman,  for  the  province  was  his  diocese 
and  he  sat  by  his  side  in  the  local  Witenagemote,  he  fur- 
nished a  standing  check  on  the  independence  of  the  great 
nobles.  But  if  feudalism  proved  too  weak  to  conquer  the 
monarchy,  it  was  strong  enough  to  paralyze  its  action. 
Neither  of  the  two  forces  could  master  the  other,  but  each 
could  weaken  the  other,  and  throughout  the  whole  period 
of  their  conflict  England  lay  a  prey  to  disorder  within  and 
to  insult  from  without. 

The  first  sign  of  these  troubles  was  seen  when  the  death 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  103 


of  Eadred  in  955  handed  over  the  realm  to  a  child  King, 
his  nephew  Eadwig.  Eadwig  was  swayed  by  a  woman 
of  high  lineage,  ^thelgif  u ;  and  the  quarrel  between  her 
ajid  the  older  counsellors  of  Eadred  broke  into  open  strife 
at  the  coronation  feast.  On  the  young  King's  insolent 
withdrawal  to  her  chamber  Dunstan,  at  the  bidding  of 
the  Witan,  drew  him  roughly  back  to  his  seat.  But  the 
feast  was  no  sooner  ended  than  a  sentence  of  outlawry 
drove  the  abbot  over  sea,  while  the  triumph  of  ^thelgifu 
was  crowned  in  957  by  the  marriage  of  her  daughter  to 
the  King  and. the  spoliation  of  the  monasteries  which 
Dunstan  had  befriended.  As  the  new  Queen  was  Ead- 
wig's  kinswoman  the  religious  opinion  of  the  day  regarded 
his  marriage  as  incestuous,  and  it  was  followed  by  a  revo- 
lution. At  the  opening  of  958  Archbishop  Odo  parted 
the  King  from  his  wife  by  solemn  sentence;  while  the 
Mercians  and  Northumbrians  rose  in  revolt,  proclaimed 
Ead wig's  brother  Eadgar  their  king,  and  recalled  Dunstan. 
The  death  of  Eadwig  a  few  months  later  restored  the  unity 
of  the  realm ;  but  his  successor  Eadgar  was  only  a  boy  of 
fourteen,  and  throughout  his  reign  the  actual  direction  of 
affairs  lay  in  the  hands  of  Dunstan,  whose  elevation  to  the 
see  of  Canterbury  set  him  at  the  head  of  the  Church  as  of 
the  State.  The  noblest  tribute  to  his  rule  lies  in  the  silence 
of  our  chroniclers.  His  work  indeed  was  a  work  of  settle-- 
ment,  and  such  a  work  was  best  done  by  the  simple  en^ 
forcement  of  peace.  During  the  years  of  rest  in  whicK; 
the  stern  hand  of  the  Primate  enforced  justice  and  order 
i^orthman  and  Englishman  drew  together  into  a  single 
people.  Their  union  was  the  result  of  no  direct  policy  of 
fusion;  on  the  contrary  Dunstan's  policy  preserved  to  the 
conquered  Danelagh  its  local  rights  and  local  usages.  But 
he  recognized  the  men  of  the  Danelagh  as  Englishmen,  he 
employed  Northmen  in  the  royal  service,  and  promoted 
them  to  high  posts  in  Church  and  State.  For  the  rest  he 
trusted  to  time,  and  time  justified  his  trust.  The  fusion 
was  marked  by  a  memorable  change  in  the  name  of  the 


104  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  I. 

land.  Slowly  as  the  conquering  tribes  had  learned  to 
know  themselves  by  the  one  national  name  of  English- 
men, they  learned  yet  more  slowly  to  stamp  their  name 
on  the  land  they  had  won.  It  was  not  till  Eadgar  's  day 
that  the  name  of  Britain  passed  into  the  name  of  Engla- 
land,  the  land  of  Englishmen,  England.  The  same  vigor- 
ous rule  which  secured  rest  for  the  country  during  these 
years  of  national  union  told  on  the  growth  of  material 
prosperity.  Commerce  sprang  into  a  wider  life.  Its  ex- 
tension is  seen  in  the  complaint  that  men  learned  fierceness 
from  the  Saxon  of  Germany,  effeminacy  from  the  Flem- 
ing, and  drunkenness  from  the  Dane.  The  laws  of  --Ethel- 
red  which  provide  for  the  protection  and  regulation  of 
foreign  trade  only  recognize  a  state  of  things  which  grew 
up  under  Eadgar.  "  Men  of  the  Empire,"  traders  of  lower 
Lorraine  and  the  Rhine-land,  "Men  of  Rouen,"  traders 
from  the  new  Norman  duchy  of  the  Seine,  were  seen  in 
the  streets  of  London.  It  was  in  Eadgar's  day  indeed  that 
London  rose  to  the  commercial  greatness  it  has  held  ever 
since. 

Though  Eadgar  reigned  for  sixteen  years,  he  was  still 
in  the  prime  of  manhood  when  he  died  in  975.  His  death 
gave  a  fresh  opening  to  the  great  nobles.  He  had  be- 
queathed the  Crown  to  his  elder  son  Eadward;  but  the 
Ealdorman  of  East  Anglia,  ^thelwine,  rose  at  once  to  set 
a  younger  child,  JEthelred,  on  the  throne.  But  the  two 
primates  of  Canterbury  and  York  who  had  joined  in  setting 
the  crown  on  the  head  of  Eadgar  now  joined  in  setting  it 
on  the  head  of  Eadward,  and  Dunstan  remained  as  before 
master  of  the  realm.  The  boy's  reign  however  was  troubled 
by  strife  between  the  monastic  party  and  their  opponents 
till  in  979  the  quarrel  was  cut  short  by  his  murder  at 
Corfe,  and  with  the  accession  of  -i^thelred,  the  power  of 
Dunstan  made  way  for  that  of  Ealdorman  ^thelwine 
and  the  Queen-mother.  Some  years  of  tranquillity  fol- 
lowed this  victory;  but  though  -(Ethelwine  preserved 
order  at  home  he  showed  little  sense  of  the  danger  which 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449-1071.  105 

■  ■     ■ ---■--■  ■  ■  mm        ■—^■^i^l^l—— ^iMt^M  O  ,       .  I      I        — 

threatened  from  abroad.  The  North  was  girding  itself  for 
a  fresh  onset  on  England.  The  Scandinavian  peoples  had 
drawn  together  into  their  kingdoms  of  Denmark,  Sweden, 
and  Norway;  and  it  was  no  longer  in  isolated  bands  but 
in  national  hosts  that  they  were  about  to  seek  conquests 
in  the  South.  As  ^thelred  drew  to  manhood  some  chance 
descents  on  the  coast  told  of  this  fresh  stir  in  the  North, 
and  the  usual  result  of  the  Northman's  presence  was  seen 
in  new  risings  among  the  Welsh. 

In  991  Ealdorman  Brihtnoth  of  East-Anglia  fell  in  battle 
with  a  Norwegian  force  at  Maldon,  and  the  withdrawal 
of  the  pirates  had  to  be  bought  by  money.  jEthelwine 
too  died  at  this  moment,  and  the  death  of  the  two  ealdor- 
men  left  ^thelred  free  to  act  as  King.  But  his  aim  was 
rather  to  save  the  Crown  from  his  nobles  than  England 
from  the  Northmen.  Handsome  and  pleasant  of  address, 
the  young  King's  pride  showed  itself  in  a  string  of  im- 
perial titles,  and  his  restless  and  self-confident  temper 
drove  him  to  push  the  pretensions  of  the  Crown  to  their 
furthest  extent.  His  aim  throughout  his  reign  was  to  free 
himself  from  the  dictation  of  the  great  nobles ;  and  it  was 
his  indifference  to  their  "  rede"  or  counsel  that  won  him 
the  name  of  ".^thelred  the  Redeless."  From  the  first  he 
struck  boldly  at  his  foes,  and  -i^lfar,  the  Ealdorman  of 
Mercia,  whom  the  death  of  his  rival  ^thelwine  left  su- 
preme in  the  realm,  was  driven  by  the  King's  hate  to 
desert  to  a  Danish  force  which  he  was  sent  in  992  to  drive 
from  the  coast,  j^thelred  turned  from  his  triumph  at 
home  to  meet  the  forces  of  the  Danish  and  Norwegian 
Kings,  Swegen  and  Olaf,  which  anchored  off  London  in 
994.  His  policy  throughout  was  a  policy  of  diplomacy 
rather  than  of  arms,  and  a  treaty  of  subsidy  gave  time  for 
intrigues  which  parted  the  invaders  till  troubles  at  home 
drew  both  again  to  the  North,  -^thelred  took  quick  ad- 
vantage of  his  success  at  home  and  abroad ;  the  place  ot 
the  great  ealdormen  in  the  royal  council  was  taken  by 
court-thegns,  in  whom  we  see  the  rudiments  of  a  ministry, 


106  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

while  the  King's  fleet  attacked  the  pirates'  haunts  in  Cum- 
berland and  the  Cotentin.  But  in  spite  of  all  this  activity 
the  news  of  a  fresh  invasion  found  England  more  weak 
and  broken  than  ever.  The  rise  of  the  "  new  men"  only 
widened  the  breach  between  the  court  and  the  great  nobles, 
and  their  resentment  showed  itself  in  delaj^s  which  foiled 
every  attempt  of  ^thelred  to  meet  the  pirate-bands  who 
still  clung  to  the  coast. 

They  came  probably  from  the  other  side  of  the  Channel, 
and  it  was  to  clear  them  away  as  well  as  secure  himself 
against  Swegen's  threatened  descent  that  -lEthelred  took 
a  step  which  brought  England  in  contact  with  a  land 
over-sea.  Normandy,  where  the  Northmen  had  settled  a 
hundred  years  before,  was  now  growing  into  a  great  power, 
and  it  was  to  win  the  friendship  of  Normandy  and  to  close 
its  harbors  against  Swegen  that  JEthelred  in  1002  took  the 
Norman  Duke's  daughter,  Emma,  to  wife.  The  same 
dread  of  invasion  gave  birth  to  a  panic  of  treason  from  the 
Northern  mercenaries  whom  the  King  had  drawn  to  settle 
in  the  land  as  a  fighting  force  against  their  brethren ;  and 
an  order  of  ^thelred  brought  about  a  general  massacre 
of  them  on  St.  Brice's  day.  Wedding  and  murder,  how- 
ever, proved  feeble  defences  against  Swegen.  His  fleet 
reached  the  coast  in  1003,  and  for  four  years  he  marched 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  Southern  and  Eastern 
England,  "  lighting  his  war-beacons  as  he  went"  in  blaz- 
ing homestead  and  town.  Then  for  a  heavy  bribe  he  with- 
drew, to  prepare  for  a  later  and  more  terrible  onset.  But 
there  was  no  rest  for  the  realm.  The  fiercest  of  the  Norwe- 
gian jarls  took  his  place,  and  from  Wessex  the  war  ex- 
tended over  Mercia  and  East-Anglia.  In  1012  Canterbury 
was  taken  and  sacked,  ^Ifheah  the  Archbishop  dragged 
to  Greenwich,  and  there  in  default  of  ransom  brutally 
slain.  The  Danes  set  him  in  the  midst  of  their  busting, 
pelting  him  with  bones  and  skulls  of  oxen,  till  one  more 
pitiful  than  the  rest  clove  his  head  with  an  axe.  Mean- 
while the  court  was  torn  with  intrigue  and  strife,  with 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  107 

quanels  between  the  court-thegns  in  their  greed  of  power 
and  yet  fiercer  quarrels  between  these  favorites  and  the 
nobles  whom  they  superseded  in  the  royal  councils.  The 
King's  policy  of  finding  aid  among  his  new  ministers  broke 
down  when  these  became  themselves  ealdormen.  With 
their  local  position  they  took  up  the  feudal  claims  of  inde- 
pendence ;  and  Eadric,  whom  ^thelred  raised  to  be  Ealdor- 
man  of  Mercia,  became  a  power  that  overawed  the  Crown. 
In  this  paralysis  of  the  central  authority  all  organization 
and  union  was  lost.  "  Shire  would  not  help  other"  when 
Swegen  returned  in  1013.  The  war  was  terrible  but  short. 
Everywhere  the  country  was  pitilessl}''  harried,  churches 
plundered,  men  slaughtered.  But,  with  the  one  exception 
of  London,  there  was  no  attempt  at  resistance.  Oxford 
and  Winchester  flung  open  their  gates.  The  thegns  of 
Wessex  submitted  to  the  Northmen  at  Bath.  Even  Lon- 
don was  forced  at  last  to  give  way,  and  ^thelred  fled 
over-sea  to  a  refuge  in  Normandy. 

He  was  soon  called  back  again.  In  the  opening  of  1014 
Swegen  died  suddenly  at  Gainsborough ;  and  the  spell  of 
terror  was  broken.  The  Witan  recalled  "  their  own  born 
lord,"  and  ^thelred  returned  to  see  the  Danish  fleet  under 
Swegen's  son,  Cnut,  sail  away  to  the  North.  It  was  but 
to  plan  a  more  terrible  return.  Youth  of  nineteen  as  he 
was,  Cnut  showed  from  the  first  the  vigor  of  his  temper. 
Setting  aside  his  brother  he  made  himself  King  of  Den- 
mark ;  and  at  once  gathered  a  splendid  fleet  for  a  fresh 
attack  on  England,  whose  King  and  nobles  were  again  at 
strife,  and  where  a  bitter  quarrel  between  Ealdorman 
Eadric  of  Mercia  and  ^thelred's  son  Eadmund  Ironside 
broke  the  strength  of  the  realm.  The  desertion  of  Eadric 
to  Cnut  as  soon  as  he  appeared  off  the  coast  threw  open 
England  to  his  arms ;  Wessex  and  Mercia  submitted  to 
him ;  and  though  the  loyalty  of  London  enabled  Eadmund, 
when  his  father's  death  raised  him  in  1016  to  the  throne, 
to  struggle  bravely  for  a  few  months  against  the  Danes,  a 
decisive  overthrow  at  Assandun  and  a  treaty  of  partiticoi 


108  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

which  this  wrested  from  him  at  Olney  were  soon  foUowed 
by  the  young  King's  death.  Cnut  was  left  master  of  the 
reahn.  His  first  acts  of  government  showed  little  but  the 
temper  of  the  mere  Northman,  passionate,  revengeful, 
uniting  the  guile  of  the  savage  with  his  thirst  for  blood. 
Eadric  of  Mercia,  whose  aid  had  given  him  the  Crown, 
was  felled  by  an  axe-blow  at  the  King's  signal ;  a  murder 
removed  Eadwig,  the  brother  of  Eadmund  Ironside,  while 
the  children  of  Eadmund  were  hunted  even  into  Hungary 
by  his  ruthless  hate.  But  from  a  savage  such  as  this  the 
young  conqueror  rose  abruptly  into  a  wise  and  temperate 
king.  His  aim  during  twenty  years  seems  to  have  been 
to  obliterate  from  men's  minds  the  foreign  character  of 
his  rule  and  the  bloodshed  in  which  it  had  begun. 

Conqueror  indeed  as  he  was,  the  Dane  was  no  foreigner 
in  the  sense  that  the  Norman  was  a  foreigner  after  him. 
His  language  differed  little  from  the  English  tongue.  He 
brought  in  no  new  system  of  tenure  or  government.  Cnut 
ruled  in  fact,  not  as  a  foreign  conqueror,  but  as  a  native 
king.  He  dismissed  his  Danish  host,  and  retaining  only 
a  trained  band  of  household  troops  or  "  hus-carles"  to  serve 
as  a  body-guard  relied  boldly  for  support  within  his  realm 
on  the  justice  and  good  government  he  secured  it.  He  fell 
back  on  "  Eadgar's  Law, "  on  the  old  constitution  of  the 
realm,  for  his  rule  of  government ;  and  owned  no  differ- 
ence between  Dane  and  Englishman  among  his  subjects. 
He  identified  himself  even  with  the  patriotism  which  had 
withstood  the  stranger.  The  Church  had  been  the  centre 
of  the  national  resistance ;  Archbishop  jElfheah  had  been 
slain  by  Danish  hands.  But  Cnut  sought  the  friendship 
of  the  Church ;  he  translated  --Elfheah's  body  with  great 
pomp  to  Canterbury ;  he  atoned  for  his  father's  ravages  by 
gifts  to  the  religious  houses ;  he  protected  English  pilgrims 
even  against  the  robber  lords  of  the  Alps.  His  love  for 
monks  broke  out  in  a  song  which  he  composed  as  he 
listened  to  their  chant  at  Ely.  "  Merrily  sang  the  monks 
of  Ely  when  Cnut  King  rowed  by"  across  the  vast  fen- 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  109 

waters  that  surrounded  their  abbey.  "Row,  boatmen, 
near  the  land,  and  hear  we  these  monks  sing. "  A  letter 
which  Cnut  wrote  after  twelve  years  of  rule  to  his  English 
subjects  marks  the  grandeur  of  his  character  and  the  noble 
conception  he  had  formed  of  kingship.  "  I  have  vowed  to 
God  to  lead  a  right  life  in  all  things,"  wrote  the  King,  "  to 
rule  justly  and  piously  my  realms  and  subjects,  and  to  ad- 
minister just  judgment  to  all.  If  heretofore  I  have  done 
aught  beyond  what  was  just,  through  headiness  or  negli- 
gence of  youth,  I  am  ready,  with  God's  help,  to  amend  it 
utterly."  No  royal  officer,  either  for  fear  of  the  King  or 
for  favor  of  any,  is  to  consent  to  injustice,  none  is  to  do 
wrong  to  rich  or  poor  "  as  they  would  value  my  friendship 
and  their  own  well-being."  He  especially  denounces  un- 
fair exactions :  "  I  have  no  need  that  money  be  heaped  to- 
gether for  me  by  unjust  demands. "  "  I  have  sent  this  letter 
before  me,"  Cnut  ends,  "that  all  the  people  of  my  realm 
may  rejoice  in  my  well-doing;  for  as  you  yourselves 
know,  never  have  I  spared,  nor  will  I  spare,  to  spend  myself 
and  my  toil  in  what  is  needful  and  good  for  my  people. " 

Cnut's  greatest  gift  to  his  people  was  that  of  peace. 
With  him  began  the  long  internal  tranquillity  which  was 
from  this  time  to  be  the  key-note  of  the  national  history. 
Without,  the  Dane  was  no  longer  a  terror ;  on  the  contrary 
it  was  English  ships  and  English  soldiers  who  now  ap- 
peared in  the  North  and  followed  Cnut  in  his  campaigns 
against  Wend  or  Norwegian.  Within,  the  exhaustion 
which  follows  a  long  anarchy  gave  fresh  strength  to  the 
Crown,  and  Cnut's  own  ruling  temper  was  backed  by  the 
force  of  hus-carles  at  his  disposal.  The  four  Earls  of 
Northumberland,  Mercia,Wes8ex,  and  East-Anglia,  whom 
he  set  in  the  place  of  the  older  ealdormen,  knew  them- 
selves to  be  the  creatures  of  his  will;  the  ablest  indeed  of 
their  number,  Godwine,  Earl  of  Wessex,  was  the  minister 
or  close  counsellor  of  the  King.  The  troubles  along  the 
Northern  border  were  ended  by  a  memorable  act  of  policy. 
From   Eadgar's  day  the  Scots  had  pressed  further  and 


110  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  I. 

further  across  the  Firth  of  Forth  till  a  victory  of  their 
Kiug  Malcolm  over  Earl  Eadwulf  at  Carham  in  1018  made 
him  master  of  Northern  Northumbria.  In  1031  Cnut  ad- 
vanced to  the  North,  but  the  quarrel  ended  in  a  formal 
cession  of  the  district  between  the  Forth  and  the  Tweed, 
Lothian  as  it  was  called,  to  the  Scot-King  on  his  doing 
homage  to  Cnut.  The  gain  told  at  once  on  the  character 
of  the  Northern  kingdom.  The  Kings  of  the  Scots  had 
till  now  been  rulers  simply  of  Gaelic  and  Celtic  peoples; 
but  from  the  moment  that  Lothian  with  its  English  farm 
ers  and  English  seamen  became  a  part  of  their  dominions 
it  became  the  most  important  part.  The  Kings  fixed  their 
seat  at  Edinburgh,  and  in  the  midst  of  an  English  popu- 
lation passed  from  Gaelic  chieftains  into  the  Saxon  rulers 
of  a  mingled  people. 

But  the  greatness  of  Cnut's  rule  hung  solely  on  the 
greatness  of  his  temper,  and  the  Danish  power  was  shaken 
by  his  death  in  1035.  The  empire  he  had  built  up  at  once 
fell  to  pieces.  He  had  bequeathed  both  England  and  Den- 
mark to  his  son  Harthacnut ;  but  the  boy's  absence  en- 
abled his  brother,  Harold  Harefoot,  to  acquire  all  England 
save  Godwine's  earldom  of  Wessex,  and  in  the  end  even 
Godwine  was  forced  to  submit  to  him.  Harold's  death  in 
1040  averted  a  conflict  between  the  brothers,  and  placed 
Harthacnut  quietly  on  the  throne.  But  the  love  which 
Cnut's  justice  had  won  turned  to  hatred  before  the  law- 
lessness of  his  successors.  The  long  peace  sickened  men 
of  their  bloodshed  and  violence.  "  Never  was  a  bloodier 
,deed  done  in  the  land  since  the  Danes  came,"  ran  a  popu- 
lar song,  when  Harold's  men  seized  JElfred,  a  brother  of 
Eadmund  Ironside,  who  returned  to  England  from  Nor- 
mandy where  he  had  found  a  refuge  since  his  father's 
flight  to  its  shores.  Every  tenth  man  among  his  followers 
was  killed,  the  rest  sold  for  slaves,  and  Alfred's  eyes  torn 
out  at  Ely.  Harthacnut,  more  savage  than  his  prede- 
cessor, dug  up  his  brother's  body  and  flung  it  into  a  marsh ; 
while  a  rising  at  Worcester  against  his  hus-carles  was 


CANUTE    COMMANDING    THE    SEA    TO    RETIRE 
From  an  Old  Print 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  Ill 

punished  by  the  burniug  of  the  town  and  the  pillage  of  the 
shire.  The  young  King's  death  was  no  less  brutal  than 
his  life;  in  1042  "he  died  as  he  stood  at  his  drink  in  the 
house  of  Osgod  Clapa  at  Lambeth."  England  wearied 
of  rulers  such  as  these :  but  their  crimes  helped  her  to  free 
herself  from  the  impossible  dream  of  Cnut.  The  North, 
still  more  barbarous  than  herself,  could  give  her  no  new 
element  of  progress  or  civilization.  It  was  the  conscious- 
ness of  this  and  a  hatred  of  rulers  such  as  Harold  and 
Harthacnut  which  co-operated  with  the  old  feeling  of  rev- 
erence for  the  past  in  calling  back  the  line  of  Alfred  to 
the  throne. 

It  is  in  such  transitional  moments  of  a  nation's  history 
that  it  needs  the  cool  prudence,  the  sensitive  selfishness, 
the  quick  perception  of  what  is  possible,  which  distin- 
guished the  adroit  politician  whom  the  death  of  Cnut  left 
supreme  in  England.  Originally  of  obscure  origin,  God- 
wine's  ability  had  raised  him  high  in  the  royal  favor;  he 
was  allied  to  Cnut  by  marriage,  entrusted  by  him  with  the 
earldom  of  Wessex,  and  at  last  made  the  Viceroy  or  justi- 
ciar of  the  King  in  the  government  of  the  realm.  In  the 
wars  of  Scandinavia  he  had  shown  courage  and  skill  at 
the  head  of  a  body  of  English  troops,  but  his  true  field  of 
action  lay  at  home.  Shrewd,  eloquent,  an  active  admin- 
istrator, Godwine  united  vigilance,  industry,  and  caution 
with  a  singular  dexterity  in  the  management  of  men. 
During  the  troubled  years  that  followed  the  death  of  Cnut 
he  did  his  best  to  continue  his  master's  policy  in  securing 
the  internal  union  of  England  under  a  Danish  sovereign 
and  in  preserving  her  connection  with  the  North.  But  at 
the  death  of  Harthacnut  Cnut's  policy  had  become  im- 
possible, and  abandoning  the  Danish  cause  Godwine  drifted 
with  the  tide  of  popular  feeling  which  called  Eadward, 
the  one  living  son  of  ^thelred,  to  the  throne.  Eadward 
had  lived  from  his  youth  in  exile  at  the  court  of  Nor- 
mandy. A  halo  of  tenderness  spread  in  after-time  round 
this  last  King  of  the  old  English  stock ;  legends  told  of  hia 


112  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [BOOK  I. 

pious  simplicity,  his  blitheness  and  gentleness  of  mood, 
the  holiness  that  gained  him  his  name  of  "  Confessor"  and 
enshrined  him  as  a  Saint  in  his  abbey-church  at  West- 
minster. Gleemen  sang  in  manlier  tones  of  the  long  peace 
and  glories  of  his  reign,  how  warriors  and  wise  counsellors 
stood  round  his  throne,  and  Welsh  and  Scot  and  Briton 
obeyed  him.  His  was  the  one  figure  that  stood  out  bright 
against  the  darkness  when  England  lay  trodden  under  foot 
by  Norman  conquerors ;  and  so  dear  became  his  memory 
that  liberty  and  independence  itself  seemed  incarnate  in 
his  name.  Instead  of  freedom,  the  subjects  of  William  or 
Henry  called  for  the  "good  laws  of  Eadward  the  Con- 
fessor." But  it  was  as  a  mere  shadow  of  the  past  that  the 
exile  really  returned  to  the  throne  of  Alfred ;  there  was 
something  shadow-like  in  his  thin  form,  his  delicate  com- 
plexion, his  transparent  womanly  hands ;  and  it  is  almost 
as  a  shadow  that  he  glides  over  the  political  stage.  The 
work  of  government  was  done  by  sterner  hands. 

Throughout  his  earlier  reign,  in  fact,  England  lay  in  the 
hands  of  its  three  Earls,  Siward  of  Northumbria,  Leofric 
of  Mercia,  and  Godwine  of  Wessex,  and  it  seemed  as  if 
the  feudal  tendency  to  provincial  separation  against  which 
jEthelred  had  struggled  was  to  triumph  with  the  death  of 
Cnut.  What  hindered  this  severance  was  the  greed  of 
Godwine.  Siward  was  isolated  in  the  North:  Leofric's 
earldom  was  but  a  fragment  of  Mercia.  But  the  Earl  of 
Wessex,  already  master  of  the  wealthiest  part  of  England, 
seized  district  after  district  for  his  house.  His  son  Swegen 
secured  an  earldom  in  the  southwest;  his  son  Harold  be- 
came Earl  of  East- Anglia ;  his  nephew  Beorn  was  estab- 
lished in  Central  England:  while  the  marriage  of  his 
daughter  Eadgyth  to  the  King  himself  gave  Godwine  a 
hold  upon  the  throne.  Policy  led  the  Earl,  as  it  led  his 
son,  rather  to  aim  at  winning  England  itself  than  at  break- 
ing up  England  to  win  a  mere  fief  in  it.  But  his  aim 
found  a  sudden  check  through  the  lawlessness  of  his  son 
Swegen.     Swegen  seduced  the  abbess  of  Leominster,  sent 


Chap.  4.]  EAELY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  113 

her  home  again  with  a  yet  more  outrageous  demand  of  her 
hand  in  marriage,  and  on  the  King's  refusal  to  grant  it 
fled  from  the  reahn.  Godwine's  influence  secured  his 
pardon,  but  on  his  very  return  to  seek  it  Swegen  murdered 
his  cousin  Beorn  who  had  opposed  the  reconciliation  and 
again  fled  to  Flanders.  A  storm  of  national  indignation 
followed  him  over-sea.  The  meeting  of  the  Wise  Men 
branded  him  as  "nithing,"  the  "utterly  worthless,"  yet  in 
a  year  his  father  wrested  a  new  pardon  from  the  King  and 
restored  him  .to  his  earldom.  The  scandalous  inlawing  of 
such  a  criminal  left  Godwine  alone  in  a  struggle  which- 
soon  arose  with  Eadward  himself.  The  King  was  a 
stranger  in  his  realm,  and  his  sympathies  lay  naturally 
with  the  home  and  friends  of  his  youth  and  exile.  He 
spoke  the  Norman  tongue.  He  used  in  Norman  fashion 
a  seal  for  his  charters.  He  set  Norman  favorites  in  the 
highest  posts  of  Church  and  State.  Foreigners  such  as 
these,  though  hostile  to  the  minister,  were  powerless 
against  Godwine's  influence  and  ability,  and  when  at  a 
later  time  they  ventured  to  stand  alone  against  him  they 
fell  without  a  blow.  But  the  general  ill-will  at  Swegen's 
inlawing  enabled  them  to  stir  Eadward  to  attack  the  Earl, 
and  in  1051  a  trivial  quarrel  brought  the  opportunity  of  a 
decisive  break  with  him.  On  his  return  from  a  visit  to 
the  Court,  Eustace,  Count  of  Boulogne,  the  husband  of  the 
King's  sister,  demanded  quarters  for  his  train  in  Dover. 
Strife  arose,  and  many  both  of  the  burghers  and  foreigners 
were  slain.  All  Godwine's  better  nature  withstood  Ead- 
ward when  the  King  angrily  bade  him  exact  vengeance 
from  the  town  for  the  affront  of  his  kinsman;  and  he 
claimed  a  fair  trial  for  the  townsmen.  But  Eadward 
looked  on  his  refusal  as  an  outrage,  and  the  quarrel  wi- 
dened into  open  strife.  Godwine  at  once  gathered  his  forces 
and  marched  upon  Gloucester,  demanding  the  expulsion 
of  the  foreign  favorites.  But  even  in  a  just  quarrel  the 
country  was  cold  in  his  support.  The  Earls  of  Mercia 
and  Northumberland  united  their  forces  to  those  of  Ead- 
VoL.  I.— 8 


114  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

ward  at  Gloucester,  and  marched  with  the  King  to  a  gath- 
ering of  the  Witenagemote  at  London,  Godwine  again 
appeared  in  arms,  but  Svvegen's  outlawry  was  renewed, 
and  the  Earl  of  Wessex,  declining  with  his  usual  prudence 
a  useless  struggle,  withdrew  over-sea  to  Flanders. 

But  the  wrath  of  the  nation  was  appeased  by  his  fall. 
Great  as  were  Godwine's  faults,  he  was  the  one  man  who 
now  stood  between  England  and  the  rule  of  the  strangers 
who  flocked  to  the  Court ;  and  a  year  had  hardly  passed 
when  he  was  strong  enough  to  return.  At  the  appearance 
of  his  fleet  in  the  Thames  in  1053  Eadward  was  once  more 
forced  to  yield.  The  foreign  prelates  and  bishops  fled 
over-sea,  outlawed  by  the  same  meeting  of  the  Wise  men 
which  restored  Godwine  to  his  home.  But  he  returned 
only  to  die,  and  the  direction  of  affairs  passed  quietly  to 
his  son  Harold,  Harold  came  to  power  unfettered  by  the* 
obstacles  which  beset  his  father,  and  for  twelve  years  he 
was  the  actual  governor  of  the  realm.  The  courage, 
the  ability,  the  genius  for  administration,  the  ambition 
and  subtlety  of  Godwine  were  found  again  in  his  son.  In 
the  internal  government  of  England  he  followed  out  his 
father's  policy  while  avoiding  its  excesses.  Peace  waa 
preserved,  justice  administered,  and  the  realm  increased 
in  wealth  and  prosperity.  Its  gold  work  and  embroidery 
became  famous  in  the  markets  of  Flanders  and  France 
Disturbances  from  without  were  crushed  sternly  and  rap 
idly;  Harold's  military  talents  displaj^ed  themselves  in  a 
campaign  against  Wales,  and  in  the  boldness  and  rapidity 
with  which,  arming  his  troops  with  weapons  adapted  for 
mountain  conflict,  he  penetrated  to  the  heart  of  its  fast- 
nesses and  reduced  the  country  to  complete  submission. 
With  the  gift  of  the  Northumbrian  earldom  on  Siward'3 
death  to  his  brother  Tostig,  all  England  save  a  small  part 
of  the  older  Mercia  lay  in  the  hands  of  the  house  of  God- 
wine, and  as  the  waning  health  of  the  King,  the  death  of 
his  nephew,  the  son  of  Eadmund,  who  had  returned  from 
Hungary  as  his  heir,  and  the  childhood  of  the  ^theling 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449-1071.  115 


Eadgar  who  stood  next  in  blood,  removed  obstacle  after 
obstacle  to  his  plans,  Harold  patiently  but  steadily  moved 
forward  to  the  throne. 

But  his  advance  was  watched  by  one  even  more  able  and 
ambitious  than  himself.  For  the  last  half-century  Eng- 
land had  been  drawing  nearer  to  the  Norman  land  which 
fronted  it  across  the  Channel.  As  we  pass  nowadays 
through  Normandy,  it  is  English  history  which  is  round 
about  us.  The  name  of  hamlet  after  hamlet  has  memories 
for  English  ears^  a  fragment  of  castle  wall  marks  the  home 
of  the  Bruce,  a  tiny  village  preserves  the  name  of  the 
Percy.  The  very  look  of  the  country  and  its  people  seem 
familiar  to  us ;  the  Norman  peasant  in  his  cap  and  blouse 
recalls  the  build  and  features  of  the  small  English  farmer; 
the  fields  about  Caen,  with  their  dense  hedgerows,  their 
elms,  their  apple-orchards,  are  the  very  picture  of  an  Eng- 
lish country-side.  Huge  cathedrals  lift  themselves  over 
the  red-tiled  roofs  of  little  market  towns,  the  models  of 
stately  fabrics  which  superseded  the  lowlier  churches  of 
-(S]lfred  or  Dunstan,  while  the  windy  heights  that  look 
over  orchard  and  meadowland  are  crowned  with  the  square 
gray  keeps  which  Normandy  gave  to  the  cliffs  of  Rich- 
mond and  the  banks  of  Thames.  It  was  Rolf  the  Ganger, 
or  Walker,  a  pirate  leader  like  Guthrum  or  Hasting,  who 
wrested  this  land  from  the  French  king,  Charles  the  Sim- 
ple, in  912,  at  the  moment  when  JElfred's  children  were 
beginning  their  conquest  of  the  English  Danelagh.  The 
treaty  of  Clair-on-Epte  in  which  France  purchased  peace 
by  this  cession  of  the  coast  was  a  close  imitation  of  the 
Peace  of  Wedmore.  Rolf,  like  Guthrum,  was  baptized, 
received  the  King's  daughter  in  marriage,  and  became  his 
vassal  for  the  territory  which  now  took  the  name  of  "  the 
Northman's  land"  or  Normandy.  But  vassalage  and  the 
new  faith  sat  lightly  on  the  Dane.  No  such  ties  of  blood 
and  speech  tended  to  unite  the  Northman  with  the  French 
among  -ivhom  he  settled  along  the  Seine  as  united  him  to 
the  Englishmen  among  whom  he  settled  along  the  Hum- 


lie  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

ber.  "William  Longsword,  the  son  of  Rolf,  though  waver- 
ing toward  France  and  Christianity,  remained  a  Northman 
in  heart;  he  called  in  a  Danish  colony  to  occupy  his  con- 
quest of  the  Cotentin,  the  peninsula  which  runs  out  from 
St.  Michael's  Mount  to  the  cliffs  of  Cherbourg,  and  reared 
his  boy  among  the  Nortlmien  of  Bayeux  where  the  Danish 
tongue  and  fashions  most  stubbornlj'-  held  their  own.  A 
heathen  reaction  followed  his  death,  and  the  bulk  of  the 
Normans,  with  the  child  Duke  Richard,  fell  away  for  the 
time  from  Christianity,  while  new  pirate-fleets  came 
swarming  up  the  Seine.  To  the  close  of  the  century  the 
whole  people  were  still  "Pirates"  to  the  French  around 
them,  their  laud  the  "Pirates'  land,"  their  Duke  the 
"Pirates'  Duke."  Yet  in  the  end  the  same  forces  which 
merged  the  Dane  in  the  Englishman  told  even  more  pow- 
erfully on  the  Dane  in  France.  No  race  has  ever  shown  a 
greater  power  of  absorbing  all  the  nobler  characteristics  of 
the  peoples  with  whom  the}^  came  in  contact,  or  of  infusing 
their  own  energy  into  them.  During  the  long  reign  of 
Duke  Richard  the  Fearless,  the  son  of  William  Long- 
sword, a  reign  which  lasted  from  945  to  996,  the  heathen 
Northmen  pirates  became  French  Christians  and  feudal  at 
heart.  The  old  Norse  language  lived  only  at  Bayeux  and 
in  a  few  local  names.  As  the  old  Northern  freedom  died 
silently  away,  the  descendants  of  the  pirates  became  feu- 
dal nobles  and  the  "  Pirates'  land"  sank  into  the  most  loyal 
of  the  fiefs  of  France. 

From  the  moment  of  their  settlement  on  the  Frankish 
coast,  the  Normans  had  been  jealously  watched  by  the 
English  kings;  and  the  anxiety  of  ^thelred  for  their 
friendship  set  a  Norman  woman  on  the  English  throne. 
The  marriage  of  Emma  with  -^Ethelred  brought  about  a 
close  political  connection  between  the  two  countries.  It 
was  in  Normandy  that  the  King  found  a  refuge  from 
Swegen's  invasion,  and  his  younger  boys  grew  up  in  exile 
at  the  Norman  court.  Their  presence  there  drew  the  eyes 
of  every  Norman  to  the  rich  land  which  offered  so  tempt- 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  117 

ing  a  prey  across  the  Channel.  The  energy  which  they 
had  shown  in  winning  their  land  from  the  Franks,  in  ab- 
sorbing the  French  civilization  and  the  French  religion, 
was  now  showing  itself  in  adventures  on  far-off  shores,  in 
crusades  against  the  Moslem  of  Spain  or  the  Arabs  of 
Sicily.  It  was  this  spirit  of  adventure  that  roused  the 
Norman  Duke  Robert  to  sail  against  England  in  Cnut's 
day  under  pretext  of  setting  ^thelred's  children  on  its 
throne,  but  the  wreck  of  his  fleet  in  a  storm  put  an  end  to 
a  project  which  might  have  anticipated  the  work  of  his 
son.  It  was  that  son,  WiUiam  the  Great,  as  men  of  his 
own  day  styled  him,  William  the  Conqueror  as  he  was  to 
stamp  himself  by  one  event  on  English  history,  who  was 
now  Duke  of  Normandy.  The  full  grandeur  of  his  in- 
domitable will,  his  large  and  patient  statesmanship,  the 
loftiness  of  aim  which  lifts  him  out  of  the  petty  incidents 
of  his  age,  were  as  yet  only  partly  disclosed.  But  there 
never  had  been  a  moment  from  his  boyhood  when  he  was 
not  among  the  greatest  of  men.  His  life  from  the  very 
first  was  one  long  mastering  of  difficulty  after  difficulty. 
The  shame  of  his  birth  remained  in  his  name  of  "the 
Bastard."  His  father  Robert  had  seen  Arlotta,  a  tanner's 
daughter  of  the  town,  as  she  washed  her  linen  in  a  little 
brook  by  Falaise;  and  loving  her  he  had  made  her  the 
mother  of  his  boy.  The  departure  of  Robert  on  a  pilgrim- 
age from  which  he  never  returned  left  William  a  child- 
ruler  among  the  most  turbulent  baronage  in  Christendom ; 
treason  and  anarchy  surrounded  him  as  he  grew  to  man- 
hood; and  disorder  broke  at  last  into  open  revolt.  But  in 
1047  a  fierce  combat  of  horse  on  the  slopes  of  Val-es-dunes 
beside  Caen  left  the  young  Duke  master  of  his  duchy  and 
he  soon  made  his  masterj-  felt.  "Normans,"  said  a  Nor- 
man poet,  "  must  be  trodden  down  and  kept  under  foot,  for 
he  only  that  bridles  them  may  use  them  at  his  need."  In 
the  stem  order  he  forced  on  the  land  Normandy  from  this 
hour  felt  the  bridle  of  its  Duke. 

Secure  at  home,  William  seized  the  moment  of  God- 


118  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

wine's  exile  to  visit  England,  and  received  from  his  cousin, 
King  Eadward,  as  he  afterward  asserted,  a  promise  of 
succession  to  his  throne.  Such  a  promise,  however,  un- 
confirmed hy  the  Witenagemote,  was  valueless;  and  the 
return  of  Godwine  must  have  at  once  cut  short  the  young 
Duke's  hopes.  He  found  in  fact  work  enough  to  do  in  his 
own  duchy,  for  the  discontent  of  his  baronage  at  the  stern 
justice  of  his  rule  found  support  in  the  jealousy  which  his 
power  raised  in  the  states  around  him,  and  it  was  only 
after  two  great  victories  at  Mortemer  and  Varaville  and 
six  years  of  hard  fighting  that  outer  and  inner  foes  were 
alike  trodden  under  foot.  In  1060  William  stood  first 
among  the  princes  of  France.  Maine  submitted  to  his 
rule.  Brittany  was  reduced  to  obedience  by  a  single 
march.  "While  some  of  the  rebel  barons  rotted  in  the 
Duke's  dungeons  and  some  were  driven  into  exile,  the 
land  settled  down  into  a  peace  which  gave  room  for  a  quick 
upgrowth  of  wealth  and  culture.  Learning  and  education 
found  their  centre  in  the  school  of  Bee,  which  the  teaching 
of  a  Lombard  scholar,  Lanfranc,  raised  in  a  few  years 
into  the  most  famous  school  of  Christendom.  Lanfranc's 
first  contact  with  William,  if  it  showed  the  Duke's  im- 
perious temper,  showed  too  his  marvellous  insight  into 
men.  In  a  strife  with  the  Papacy  which  William  pro- 
voked by  his  marriage  with  Matilda,  a  daughter  of  the 
Count  of  Flanders,  Lanfranc  took  the  side  of  Rome.  His 
opposition  was  met  by  a  sentence  of  banishment,  and  the 
Prior  had  hardly  set  out  on  a  lame  horse,  the  only  one  his 
house  could  afford,  when  he  was  overtaken  by  the  Duke, 
impatient  that  he  should  quit  Normandy.  "  Give  me  a 
better  horse  and  I  shall  go  the  quicker,"  replied  the  im- 
perturbable Lombard,  and  William's  wrath  passed  into 
laughter  and  good  will.  From  that  hour  Lanfranc  became 
his  minister  and  counsellor,  whether  for  affairs  in  the 
flnchy  itself  or  for  the  more  daring  schemes  of  ambition 
which  opened  up  across  the  Channel. 
William's  hopes  of  the  English  crown  are  said  to  have 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.    449— 107L  118 

been  revived  by  a  storm  which  threw  Harold,  while  cruis- 
ing in  the  Channel,  on  the  coast  of  Ponthieu.  Its  count 
sold  him  to  the  Duke ;  and  as  the  price  of  return  to  England 
William  forced  him  to  swear  on  the  relics  of  saints  to 
support  his  claim  to  its  throne.  But,  true  or  no,  the  oath 
told  little  on  Harold's  course.  As  the  childless  King  drew 
to  his  grave  one  obstacle  after  another  was  cleared  from 
the  Earl's  path.  His  brother  Tostig  had  become  his  most 
dangerous  rival;  but  a  revolt  of  the  Northumbrians  drove 
Tostig  to  Flanders,  and  the  Earl  was  able  to  win  over  the 
Mercian  house  of  Leofric  to  his  cause  by  owning  Morkere, 
the  brother  of  the  Mercian  Earl  Eadwine,  as  his  brother's 
successor.  His  aim  was  in  fact  attained  without  a  strug- 
gle. In  the  opening  of  1066  the  nobles  and  bishops  who 
gathered  round  the  death-bed  of  the  Confessor  passed 
quietly  from  it  to  the  election  and  coronation  of  Harold. 
But  at  Rouen  the  news  was  welcomed  with  a  burst  of  furi- 
ous passion,  and  the  Duke  of  Normandy  at  once  prepared 
to  enforce  his  claim  by  arms.  William  did  not  claim  the 
Crown.  He  claimed  simply  the  right  which  he  afterward 
used  when  his  sword  had  won  it  of  presenting  himself  for 
election  by  the  nation,  and  he  believed  himself  entitled  so 
to  present  himself  by  the  direct  commendation  of  the 
Confessor.  The  actual  election  of  Harold  which  stood  in 
his  way,  humed  as  it  was,  he  did  not  recognize  as  valid. 
But  with  this  constitutional  claim  was  inextricably  min- 
gled resentment  at  the  private  wrong  which  Harold  had 
done  him,  and  a  resolve  to  exact  vengeance  on  the  man 
whom  he  regarded  as  untrue  to  his  oath.  The  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  his  enterprise  were  indeed  enormous.  He 
could  reckon  on  no  support  within  England  itself.  At 
home  he  had  to  extort  the  consent  of  his  own  reluctant 
baronage ;  to  gather  a  motley  host  from  every  quarter  of 
France  and  to  keep  it  together  for  months ;  to  create  a  fleet, 
to  cut  down  the  very  trees,  to  build,  to  launch,  to  man  the 
vessels;  and  to  find  time  amid  all  this  for  the  common 
business  of  government,  for  negotiations  with  Denmark 


120  HISTOR\*   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

and  the  Empire,  with  France,  Brittany,  and  Anjou,  with 
Flanders  and  with  Rome  which  had  been  estranged  from 
England  by  Archbishop  Stigand's  acceptance  of  his  pallium 
from  one  who  was  not  owned  as  a  canonical  Pope. 

But  his  rival's  difficulties  were  hardly  less  than  his  own. 
Harold  was  threatened  with  invasion  not  only  by  William 
but  by  his  brother  Tostig,  who  had  taken  refuge  in  Nor- 
way and  secured  the  aid  of  its  King,  Harald  Hardrada. 
The  fleet  and  army  he  had  gathered  lay  watching  for 
months  along  the  coast.  His  one  standing  force  was  his 
body  of  hus-carles,  but  their  numbers  only  enabled  them 
to  act  as  the  nucleus  of  an  army.  On  the  other  hand  the 
Land-fyrd  or  general  levy  of  fighting-men  was  a  body  easy 
to  raise  for  any  single  encounter  but  hard  to  keep  together. 
To  assemble  such  a  force  was  to  bring  labor  to  a  standstill. 
The  men  gathered  under  the  King's  standard  were  the 
farmers  and  ploughmen  of  their  fields.  The  ships  were 
the  fishing- vessels  of  the  coast.  In  September  the  task  of 
holding  them  together  became  impossible,  but  their  dis- 
persion had  hardly  taken  place  when  the  two  clouds  which 
had  so  long  been  gathering  burst  at  once  upon  the  realm. 
A  change  of  wind  released  the  landlocked  armament  of 
William;  but  before  changing,  the  wind  which  prisoned 
the  Duke  brought  the  host  of  Tostig  and  Harald  Hardrada 
to  the  coast  of  Yorkshire.  The  King  hastened  with  his 
household  troops  to  the  north  and  repulsed  the  Norwegians 
in  a  decisive  overthrow  at  Stamford  Bridge,  but  ere  he 
could  hurry  back  to  London  the  Norman  host  had  crossed 
the  sea  and  William,  who  had  anchored  on  the  twenty- 
eighth  of  September  off  Pevensey,  was  ravaging  the  coast 
to  bring  his  rival  to  an  engagement.  His  merciless  rav- 
ages succeeded  in  drawing  Harold  from  London  to  the 
south;  but  the  King  wisely  refused  to  attack  with  the 
troops  he  had  hastily  summoned  to  his  banner.  If  he  was 
forced  to  give  battle,  he  resolved  to  give  it  on  ground  he 
had  himself  chosen,  and  advancing  near  enough  to  the 
coast  to  check  William's  ravages  he  entrenched  himself  on 


Chap.  4.]  EARL\   ENGLAND.     449—1071.  121 

a  hill  known  afterward  as  that  of  Senlac,  a  low  spur  of 
the  Sussex  downs  near  Hastings.  His  position  covered 
London  and  drove  William  to  concentrate  his  forces.  With 
a  host  subsisting  by  pillage,  to  concentrate  is  to  starve ; 
and  no  alternative  was  left  to  the  Duke  but  a  decisive  vic- 
tory or  ruin.  ' 
On  the  fourteenth  of  October  William  led  his  men  at 
dawn  along  the  higher  ground  that  leads  from  Hastings 
to  the  battle-field  which  Harold  had  chosen.  From  the 
mound  of  Telham  the  Normans  saw  the  host  of  the  Eng- 
lish gathered  thickly  behind  a  rough  trench  and  a  stockade 
on  the  height  of  Senlac.  Marshy  ground  covered  their 
right ;  on  the  left,  the  most  exposed  part  of  the  position, 
the  hus-carles  or  body-guard  of  Harold,  men  in  full  armor 
and  wielding  huge  axes,  were  grouped  round  the  Golden 
Dragon  of  Wessex  and  the  Standard  of  the  King.  The 
rest  of  the  ground  was  covered  by  thick  masses  of  half- 
armed  rustics  who  had  flocked  at  Harold's  summons  to  the 
fight  with  the  stranger.  It  was  against  the  centre  of  this 
formidable  position  that  William  arrayed  his  Norman 
knighthood,  while  the  mercenary  forces  he  had  gathered 
in  France  and  Britanny  were  ordered  to  attack  its  flanks. 
A  general  charge  of  the  Norman  foot  opened  the  battle ; 
in  front  rode  the  minstrel  Taillefer,  tossing  his  sword  in 
the  air  and  catching  it  again  while  he  chanted  the  song 
of  Roland.  He  was  the  first  of  the  host  who  struck  a  blow, 
and  he  was  the  first  to  fall.  The  charge  broke  vainly  on 
the  stout  stockade  behind  which  the  English  warriors  plied 
axe  and  javelin  with  fierce  cries  of  "Out,  out,"  and  the 
repulse  of  the  Norman  footmen  was  followed  by  a  repulse 
of  the  Norman  horse.  Again  and  again  the  Duke  rallied 
and  led  them  to  the  fatal  stockade.  All  the  fury  of  fight 
that  glowed  in  his  Norseman's  blood,  all  the  headlong 
valor  that  spurred  him  over  the  slopes  of  Val-es-dunes, 
mingled  that  day  with  the  coolness  of  head,  the  dogged 
perseverance,  the  inexhaustible  faculty  of  resource  which 
shone  at  Mortemer  and  Varaville.     His  Breton  troops,  en- 


122  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 

tangled  in  the  marshy  ground  on  his  left,  broke  in  disor- 
der, and  as  panic  spread  through  the  army  a  cry  arose  that 
the  Duke  was  slain.  William  tore  off  his  helmet ;  "  1  live," 
he  shouted,  "  and  by  God's  help  I  will  conquer  yet."  Mad- 
dened by  a  fresh  repulse,  the  Duke  spurred  right  at  the 
Standard;  unhorsed,  his  terrible  mace  struck  down  Gyrth, 
the  King's  brother;  again  dismounted,  a  blow  from  his 
hand  hurled  to  the  ground  an  unmannerly  rider  who  would 
not  lend  him  his  steed.  Amid  the  roar  and  tumult  of  the 
battle  he  turned  the  flight  he  had  arrested  into  the  mean3 
of  victory.  Broken  as  the  stockade  was  by  bis  desperate 
onset,  the  shield -wall  of  the  warriors  behind  it  still  held 
the  Normans  at  bay  till  William  by  a  feint  of  flight  drew 
a  part  of  the  English  forces  from  their  post  of  vantage. 
Turning  on  his  disorderly  pursuers,  the  Duke  cut  them  to 
pieces,  broke  through  the  abandoned  line,  and  made  him- 
self master  »f  the  central  ground.  Meanwhile  the  French 
and  Bretons  made  good  their  ascent  on  either  flank.  At 
three  the  hill  seemed  won,  at  six  the  fight  still  raged 
around  the  Standard  where  Harold's  hus-carles  stood  stub- 
bornly at  bay  on  a  spot  marked  afterward  by  the  high 
altar  of  Battle  Abbey.  An  order  from  the  Duke  at  last 
brought  his  archers  to  the  front.  Their  arrow-flight  told 
heavily  on  the  dense  masses  crowded  around  the  King,  and 
as  the  sun  went  down  a  shaft  pierced  Harold's  right  eye. 
He  fell  between  the  royal  ensigns,  and  the  battle  closed 
with  a  desperate  melee  over  his  corpse. 

Night  covered  the  flight  of  the  English  army :  but  Wil- 
liam was  quick  to  reap  the  advantage  of  his  victory.  Se- 
curing Romney  and  Dover,  he  marched  by  Canterbury 
upon  London.  Faction  and  intrigue  were  doing  his  work 
for  him  as  he  advanced ;  for  Harold's  brothers  had  fallen 
with  the  King  on  the  field  of  Senlac,  and  there  was  none 
of  the  house  of  Godwine  to  contest  the  crown.  Of  the  old 
royal  line  there  remained  but  a  single  boy,  Eadgar  the 
JEtheling.  He  was  chosen  King;  but  the  choice  gave 
little  strength  to  the  national  cause.     The  widow  of  the 


2 
O 
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O 

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ce 
of. 


Chap.  4.]     EARLY  ENGLAND.  449—1071.         123 

Confessor  surrendered  Winchester  to  the  Duke.  The  bish- 
ops gathered  at  London  inclined  to  submission.  The 
citizens  themselves  faltered  as  William,  passing  by  their 
walls,  gave  Southwark  to  the  flames.  The  throne  of  the 
boy-king  really  rested  for  support  on  the  Earls  of  Mercia 
and  Northumbria,  Eadwine  and  Morkere ;  and  William, 
crossing  the  Thames  at  Wallingford  and  marching  into 
Hertfordshire,  threatened  to  cut  them  off  from  their  earl- 
doms. The  masterly  movement  forced  the  Earls  to  hurry 
home,  and  London  gave  way  at  once.  Eadgar  himself 
was  at  the  head  of  the  deputation  who  came  to  offer  the 
crown  to  the  Norman  Duke.  "  They  bowed  to  him,"  says 
the  English  annalist,  pathetically,  "for  need."  They 
bowed  to  the  Norman  as  they  had  bowed  to  the  Dane,  and 
William  accepted  the  crown  in  the  spirit  of  Cnut.  London 
indeed  was  secured  by  the  erection  of  a  fortress  which 
afterward  grew  into  the  Tower,  but  William  desired  to 
reign  not  as  a  conqueror  but  as  a  lawful  king.  At  Christ- 
mas he  received  the  crown  at  Westminster  from  the  hands 
of  Archbishop  Ealdred  amid  shouts  of  "Yea,  Yea,"  from 
his  new  English  subjects.  Fines  from  the  greater  land- 
owners atoned  for  a  resistance  which  now  counted  as  re- 
bellion ;  but  with  this  exception  every  measure  of  the  new 
sovereign  showed  his  desire  of  ruling  as  a  successor  of 
Eadward  or  Alfred.  As  yet  indeed  the  greater  part  of 
England  remained  quietly  aloof  from  him,  and  he  can 
hardly  be  said  to  have  been  recognized  as  king  by  North- 
umberland or  the  greater  part  of  Mercia.  But  to  the  east 
of  a  line  which  stretched  from  Norwich  to  Dorsetshire  his 
rule  was  unquestioned,  and  over  this  portion  he  ruled  as 
an  English  king.  His  soldiers  were  kept  in  strict  order. 
No  change  was  made  in  law  or  custom.  The  privileges 
of  London  were  recognized  by  a  royal  writ  which  still  re- 
mains, the  most  venerable  of  its  muniments,  among  the 
city's  archives.  Peace  and  order  were  restored.  William 
even  attempted,  though  in  vain,  to  learn  the  English 
tongue  that  he  might  personally  administer  justice  to  the 


124  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  L 

suitors  in  his  court.  The  kingdom  seemed  so  tranquil  that 
only  a  few  months  had  passed  after  the  battle  of  Senlac 
when  leaving  England  in  charge  of  his  brother,  Odo, 
Bishop  of  Bayeux,  and  his  minister,  William  Fitz-Osbern, 
the  King  returned  in  1067  for  a  while  to  NormandJ^  The 
peace  he  left  was  soon  indeed  disturbed.  Bishop  Odo's 
tyranny  forced  the  Kentishmen  to  seek  aid  from  Count 
Eustace  of  Boulogne ;  while  the  Welsh  princes  supported 
a  similar  rising  against  Norman  oppression  in  the  west. 
But  as  yet  the  bulk  of  the  land  held  fairly  to  the  new  king. 
Dover  was  saved  from  Eustace ;  and  the  discontented  fled 
over-seat  to  seek  refuge  in  lands  as  far  off  as  Constantino- 
ple, where  Englishmen  from  this  time  formed  great  part 
of  the  bodyguard  or  Varangians  of  the  Eastern  Emperors. 
William  returned  to  take  his  place  again  as  an  English 
King.  It  was  with  an  English  force  that  he  subdued  a 
rising  in  the  southwest  with  Exeter  at  its  head,  and  it 
was  at  the  head  of  an  English  army  that  he  completed  his 
work  by  marching  to  the  North.  His  march  brought 
Eadwine  and  Morkere  again  to  submission ;  a  fresh  rising 
ended  in  the  occupation  of  York,  and  England  as  far  as 
the  Tees  lay  quietly  at  William's  feet. 

It  was  in  fact  only  the  national  revolt  of  1068  that  trans- 
formed the  King  into  a  conqueror.  The  signal  for  this 
revolt  came  from  Swegen,  King  of  Denmark,  who  had 
for  two  years  past  been  pi  eparing  to  dispute  England  with 
the  Norman,  but  on  the  appearance  of  his  fleet  in  the 
Humber  all  Northern,  all  Western  and  Southwestern  Eng- 
land rose  as  one  man.  Eadgar  the  ^thelinp-  with  a  band 
of  exiles  who  had  found  refuge  in  Scotland  took  the  head 
of  the  Northumbrian  revolt ;  in  the  southwest  the  men  of 
Devon,  Somerset,  and  Dorset  gathered  to  the  sieges  of 
Exeter  and  Montacute;  while  a  new  Norman  castle  at 
Shrewsbury  alone  bridled  a  rising  in  the  West.  So  ably 
had  the  revolt  been  planned  that  even  William  was  taken 
by  surprise.  The  outbreak  was  heralded  by  a  storm  of 
York  and  the  slaughter  of  three  thousand  Normans  who 


Chap.  4.]  EARLY  ENGLAND.     449—1071.  125 

formed  its  garrison.  The  news  of  this  slaughter  reached 
William  as  he  was  hunting  in  the  forest  of  Dean ;  and  in 
a  wild  outburst  of  wrath  he  swore  "  by  the  splendor  of 
God"  to  avenge  himself  on  the  North.  But  wrath  went 
hand  in  hand  with  the  coolest  statesmanship.  The  centre 
of  resistance  lay  in  the  Danish  fleet,  and  pushing  rapidly 
to  the  Humber  with  a  handful  of  horsemen  William 
bought  at  a  heavy  price  its  inactivity  and  withdrawal. 
Then  turning  westward  with  the  troops  that  gathered 
round  him  he  swept  the  Welsh  border  and  relieved  Shrews- 
bury while  William  Fitz-Osbern  broke  the  rising  around 
Exeter.  His  success  set  the  King  free  to  fulfil  his  oath  of 
vengeance  on  the  North,  After  a  long  delay  before  the 
flooded  waters  of  the  Aire  he  entered  York  and  ravaged 
the  whole  country  as  far  as  the  Tees.  Town  and  village 
were  harried  and  burned,  their  inhabitants  were  slain  or 
driven  over  the  Scottish  border.  The  coast  was  especially 
wasted  that  no  hold  might  remain  for  future  landings  of 
the  Danes.  Crops,  cattle,  the  very  implements  of  hus- 
bandry were  so  mercilessly  destroyed  that  a  famine  which 
followed  is  said  to  have  swept  off  more  than  a  hundred 
thousand  victims.  Half  a  century  later  indeed  the  land 
still  lay  bare  of  culture  and  deserted  of  men  for  sixty  miles 
northward  of  York.  The  work  of  vengeance  once  ovei, 
William  led  his  army  back  from  the  Tees  to  York,  and 
thence  to  Chester  and  the  West.  Never  had  he  shown 
the  grandeur  of  his  character  so  memorably  as  in  this  ter- 
rible march.  The  winter  was  hard,  the  roads  choked 
with  snowdrifts  or  broken  by  torrents,  provisions  failed ; 
and  his  army,  storm-beaten  and  forced  to  devour  its  horses 
for  food,  broke  out  into  mutiny  at  the  order  to  cross  the 
bleak  moorlands  that  part  Yorkshire  from  the  West.  The 
mercenaries  from  Anjou  and  Brittany  demanded  their 
release  from  service.  William  granted  their  prayer  with 
scorn.  On  foot,  at  the  head  of  the  troops  which  still  clung 
to  him,  he  forced  his  way  by  paths  inaccessible  to  horses, 
often  helping  the  men  with  his  own  hands  to  clear  the 


126  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.        [Book  I. 

road,  and  as  the  army  descended  upon  Chester  the  resist- 
ance of  the  English  died  away. 

For  two  years  William  was  able  to  busy  himself  in 
castle-building  and  in  measures  for  holding  down  the  con- 
quered land.  How  effective  these  were  was  seen  when 
the  last  act  of  the  conquest  was  reached.  All  hope  of 
Danish  aid  was  now  gone,  but  Englishmen  still  looked  for 
help  to  Scotland,  where  Eadgar  the  ^tbeling  had  again 
found  refuge  and  where  his  sister  Margaret  had  become 
wife  of  King  Malcolm.  It  was  probably  some  assurance 
of  Malcolm's  aid  which  roused  the  Mercian  Earls,  Ead- 
wine  and  Morkere,  to  a  fresh  rising  in  1071.  But  the  re- 
volt was  at  once  foiled  by  the  vigilance  of  the  Conqueror. 
Eadwine  fell  in  an  obscure  skirmish,  while  Morkere  found 
shelter  for  a  while  in  the  fen  country  where  a  desperate 
band  of  patriots  gathered  round  an  outlawed  leader,  Here- 
ward.  Nowhere  had  William  found  so  stubborn  a  resist- 
ance ;  but  a  causeway  two  miles  long  was  at  last  driven 
across  the  marshes,  and  the  last  hopes  of  English  freedom 
died  in  the  surrender  of  Ely.  It  was  as  the  unquestioned 
master  of  England  that  William  marched  to  the  North, 
crossed  the  Lowlands  and  the  Forth,  and  saw  Malcolm 
appear  in  his  camp  upon  the  Tay  to  swear  fealty  at  his 
feet. 


BOOK  II. 

EIGLAND  UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS. 

1071—1314. 


^  AUTHOEITIES  FOR  BOOK  II. 

1071—1214. 

Among  the  Norman  chroniclers  Orderic  becomes  from  this  point 
particularly  valuable  and  detailed.  The  Chronicle  and  Florence  of 
Worcester  remain  the  primary  English  authorities,  while  Simeon 
of  Durham  gives  much  special  information  on  northern  matters. 
For  the  reign  of  William  the  Red  the  chief  source  of  information  is 
Eadmer,  a  monk  of  Canterbury,  in  his  "Historia  Novorum"  and 
"Life  of  Anselm. "  William  of  Malmesbury  and  Henry  of  Hunting- 
don are  both  contemporary  authorities  during  that  of  Henry  the 
First ;  the  latter  remains  a  brief  but  accurate  annalist ;  the  former 
is  the  leader  of  a  new  historic  school,  who  treat  English  events  as 
part  of  the  history  of  the  world,  and  emulate  classic  models  by  a 
more  philosophical  arrangement  of  their  niateriiils.  To  these  the 
opening  of  Stephen's  reign  adds  the  "Gesta  Stejliani,"  a  record  in 
great  detail  by  one  of  the  King's  clerks,  and  the  Hexham  Chroniclers. 

All  this  wealth  of  historical  material,  however,  suddenly  leavet  us 
in  the  chaos  of  civil  war.  Even  the  Chronicle  dies  out  in  the  midst 
of  Stephen's  reign,  and  the  close  at  the  same  time  of  the  works  we 
have  noted  leaves  a  blank  in  our  historical  literature  which  extends 
over  the  early  years  of  Henry  the  Second.  But  this  dearth  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  vast  outburst  of  historical  industry.  For  the  Beket 
struggle  we  have  the  mass  of  the  Archbishop's  own  correspondence 
with  that  of  Foliot  and  John  of  Salisbury.  From  1169  to  1192  our 
primary  authority  is  the  Chronicle  known  as  that  of  Benedict  of 
Peterborough,  whose  authorship  Professor  Stubbs  has  shown  to  be 
more  probably  due  to  tiie  royal  treasurer,  Bishop  Richard  Fitz-Neal. 
This  is  continued  to  1301  by  Roger  of  Howden  in  a  record  of  equally 
official  value.  William  of  Newborough's  history,  which  ends  in 
1198,  is  a  work  of  the  classical  school,  like  William  of  Malmes- 
bury's  It  is  distinguished  by  its  fairness  and  good  sense.  To  these 
may  be  added  the  Chronicle  of  Ralph  Niger,  with  the  additions  o 
Ralph  of  Coggeshall,  that  of  Gervais  of  Canterbury,  and  the  inter 
esting  life  of  St.  Hugh  of  Lincoln. 

But  the  intellectual  energy  of  Henry  the  Second's  time  is  shown 
even  more  remarkably  in  the  mass  of  general  literatiu-e  which  lies 
behind  these  distinctively  historical  sources,  in  the  treatises  of  John 
of  Salisbuiy,  the  voluminous  works  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  the 
"Trifles"  and  satires  of  Walter  Map,  Glanvill's  treatise  on  Law, 
Richard  FitzNeal's  "Dialogue  on  the  Exchequer,"  to  which  we  owe 
our  knowledge  of  Henry's  financial  system,  the  romances  of  Gaimar 
and  of  Wace,  the  poem  of  the  San  Graal.  But  this  intellectual  fer- 
tility is  far  from  ceasing  with  Henry  the  Second.  The  thirteenth 
century  has  hardly  begun  when  the  romantic  impulse  quickens  even 

Vol.  I.— 9 


loO  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 


the  old  English  tongue  in  the  long  poem  of  Layamon.  The  Chronicle 
of  Richard  of  Devizes  and  an  "  Itineraiiiim  Regis"  supplement  Roger 
of  Howden  for  Richard's  reign.  With  John  we  enter  upon  the  An- 
nal  of  Barnwell  and  arc  aided  by  the  invaluable  series  of  the  Chroni- 
clers of  St.  Albans.  Among  the  side  topics  of  the  time,  we  may 
find  much  information  as  to  the  Jews  in  Toovey's  "  Anglia  Judaica  ;" 
the  Chronicle  of  Jocelyn  of  Brakelond  gives  us  a  peep  into  social 
and  monastic  life  ;  the  Cistercian  revival  may  be  traced  in  the  rec- 
ords of  the  Cistercian  abbeys  in  Dugdale's  Mouasticon  ;  the  Charter 
Rolls  give  some  information  as  to  municipal  history,  and  constitu- 
tional development  may  be  traced  in  the  documents  collected  by 
Professor  Stubbs  in  his  "  Select  Charters. " 


CHAPTEE  I. 

THE   CONQUEROR. 
1071—1085. 

In  the  five  hundred  years  that  followed  the  landing  of 
Hengest  Britain  had  become  England,  and  its  conquest 
had  ended  in  the  settlement  of  its  conquerors,  in  their  con- 
version to  Christianity,  in  the  birth  of  a  national  litera- 
ture, of  an  imperfect  civilization,  of  a  rough  political 
order.  But  through  the  whole  of  this  earlier  age  every 
attempt  to  fuse  the  various  tribes  of  conquerors  into  a 
single  nation  had  failed.  The  effort  of  Northumbria  to 
extend  her  rule  over  all  England  had  been  foiled  by  the 
resistance  of  Mercia  ;  that  of  Mercia  by  the  resistance  of 
Wessex.  "Wessex  herself,  even  under  the  guidance  of 
great  kings  and  statesmen,  had  no  sooner  reduced  the 
country  to  a  seeming  unity  than  local  independence  rose 
again  at  the  call  of  the  Northmen.  The  sense  of  a  single 
England  deepened  with  the  pressure  of  the  invaders ;  the 
monarchy  of  JElfred  and  his  house  broadened  into  an 
English  kingdom  ;  but  still  tribal  jealousies  battled  with 
national  unity.  Northumbrian  lay  apart  from  West- 
Saxon,  Northman  from  Englishman.  A  common  national 
sympathy  held  the  country  roughly  together,  but  a  real 
national  union  had  yet  to  come.  It  came  with  foreign 
rule.  The  rule  of  the  Danish  kings  broke  local  jealousies 
as  they  had  never  been  broken  before,  and  bequeathed  a 
new  England  to  Godwine  and  the  Confessor.  But  Cnut 
was  more  Englishman  than  Northman,  and  his  system  of 
government  was  an  English  system.  The  true  foreign 
yoke  was  only  felt  when  England  saw  its  conqueror  in 
William  the  Norman. 


132  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

For  nearly  a  century  and  a  half,  from  the  hour  when 
William  turned  triumphant  from  the  fens  of  Ely  to  the 
hour  when  John  fled  defeated  from  Norman  shores,  our 
story  is  one  of  foreign  masters.     Kings  from  Normandy 
were  followed  by  kings  from  Anjou.     But  whether  under 
Norman  or  Angevin  Englishmen  were  a  subject  race,  con- 
quered and  ruled  by  men  of  strange  blood  and  of  strange 
speech.     And  3'et  it  was  in  these  years  of  subjection  that 
England  first  became  really  England.     Provincial  differ- 
ences were  finally  crushed  into  national  unity  by  the  press- 
ure of  the  stranger.     The  firm  government  of  her  foreign 
kings  secured  the  land  a  long  and  almost  unbroken  peace 
in  which  the  new  nation  grew  to  a  sense  of  its  oneness, 
and  this  consciousness  was  strengthened  by  the  political 
ability  which  in  Henry  the  First  gave  it  administrative 
order  and  in  Henry  the  Second  built  up  the  fabric  of  its 
law.     New  elements  of  social  life  were  developed  alike  by 
the  suffering  and  the  prosperity  of  the  times.     The  wrong 
which  had  been  done  by  the  degradation  of  the  free  land- 
owner into  a  feudal  dependant  was  partially  redressed  by 
the  degradation  of  the  bulk  of  the  English  lords  themselves 
into  a  middle  class  as  they  were  pushed  from  their  place 
by  the  foreign  baronage  who  settled  on  English  soil;  and 
this  social  change  was  accompanied  by  a  gradual  enrich- 
ment and  elevation  of  the  class  of  servile  and  semi-servile 
cultivators  which  had  lifted  them  at  the  close  of  this  period 
into  almost  complete  freedom.     The  middle-class  which 
was  thus  created  was  reinforced  by  the  upgrowth  of  a  cor- 
responding class  in  our  tov/ns.     Commerce  and  trade  were 
promoted  by  the  justice  and  policy  of  the  foreign  kings ; 
and  with  their  advance  rose  the  political  importance  of 
the  trader.     The  boroughs  of  England,  which  at  the  open- 
ing of  this  period  were  for  the  most  part  mere  villages, 
were  rich  enough  at  its  close  to  buy  liberty  from  the  Crown 
and  to  stand  ready  for  the  mightier  part  they  were  to  play 
in  the  development  of  our   parliament.     The  shame  of 
conquest,  the  oppression  of  the  conquerors,  begot  a  moral 


Chap.  1.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  133 

and  religious  revival  which  raised  religion  into  a  living 
thing;  while  the  close  connection  with  the  Continent 
which  foreign  conquest  brought  about  secured  for  Eng- 
land a  new  communion  with  the  artistic  and  intellectual 
life  of  the  world  without  her. 

In  a  word,  it  is  to  the  stern  discipline  of  our  foreign 
kings  that  we  owe  not  merely  English  wealth  and  Eng- 
lish freedom  but  England  herself.  And  of  these  foreign 
masters  the  greatest  was  William  of  Normandy.  In  Wil- 
liam the  wild  impulses  of  the  Northman's  blood  mingled 
strangely  with  the  cool  temper  of  the  modern  statesman. 
As  he  was  the  last,  so  he  was  the  most  terrible  outcome  of 
the  northern  race.  The  very  spirit  of  the  sea-robbers  from 
whom  he  sprang  seemed  embodied  in  his  gigantic  form, 
his  enormous  strength,  his  savage  countenance,  his  des- 
perate bravery,  the  fury  of  his  wrath,  the  ruthlessness  of 
his  revenge.  "No  knight  under  Heaven,"  bis  enemies 
owned,  "was  William's  peer."  Boy  as  he  was  at  Val- 
es-dunes, horse  and  man  went  down  before  his  lance.  All 
the  fierce  gayety  of  his  nature  broke  out  in  the  warfare  of 
his  youth,  in  his  rout  of  fifteen  Angevins  with  but  five 
men  at  his  back,  in  his  defiant  ride  over  the  ground  which 
Geoffry  Martel  claimed  from  him,  a  ride  with  hawk  on 
fist  as  if  war  and  the  chase  were  one.  No  man  could 
bend  William's  bow.  His  mace  crashed  its  way  through 
a  ring  of  English  warriors  to  the  foot  of  the  Standard. 
He  rose  to  his  greatest  height  at  moments  when  other 
men  despaired.  His  voice  rang  out  as  a  trumpet  when 
his  soldiers  fled  before  the  English  charge  at  Senlac,  and 
his  rally  turned  the  flight  into  a  means  of  victory.  In  his 
winter  march  on  Chester  he  strode  afoot  at  the  head  of  his 
fainting  troops  and  helped  with  his  own  hand  to  clear  a 
road  through  the  snowdrifts.  And  with  the  Northman's 
daring  broke  out  the  Northman's  pitilessness.  When  the 
townsmen  of  Alengon  hung  raw  hides  along  their  walls  in 
eoorn  of  the  "tanner's"  grandson,  William  tore  out  his 
prisoners'  eyes,  hewed  off  their  hands  and  feet,  and  flung 


134  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

them  into  the  town.  Hundreds  of  Hampshire  men  were 
driven  from  their  homes  to  make  him  a  hunting-ground, 
and  his  harrying  of  North  umbria  left  Northern  England 
a  desolate  Avaste.  Of  men's  love  or  hate  he  recked  little. 
His  grim  look,  his  pride,  his  silence,  his  wild  outbursts  of 
passion,  left  William  lonely  even  in  his  Court.  His  sub- 
jects trembled  as  he  passed.  "  Stark  man  he  was,"  writes 
the  English  chronicler,  "and  great  awe  men  had  of  him." 
His  very  wrath  was  solitary.  "  To  no  man  spake  he  and 
no  man  dared  speak  to  him,"  when  the  news  reached  him 
of  Harold's  seizure  of  the  throne.  It  was  only  when  he 
passed  from  his  palace  to  the  loneliness  of  the  woods  that 
the  King's  temper  unbent.  "  He  loved  the  wild  deer  as 
though  he  had  been  their  father." 

It  was  the  genius  of  William  which  lifted  him  out  of 
this  mere  Northman  into  a  great  general  and  a  great 
statesman.  The  wary  strategy  of  his  French  campaigns, 
the  organization  of  his  attack  upon  England,  the  vnctory 
at  Senlac,  the  quick  resource,  the  steady  perseverance 
which  achieved  the  Conquest  showed  the  wide  range  of 
his  generalship.  His  political  ability  had  shown  itself 
from  the  first  moment  of  his  accession  to  the  ducal  throne. 
William  had  the  instinct  of  government.  He  had  hardly 
reached  manhood  when  Normandy  lay  peaceful  at  his 
feet.  Revolt  was  crushed.  Disorder  was  trampled  under 
foot.  The  Duke  "could  never  love  a  robber,"  be  he  baron 
or  knave.  The  sternness  of  his  temper  stamped  itself 
throughout  upon  his  rule.  "  Stark  he  was  to  men  that 
withstood  him,"  says  the  Chronicler  of  his  English  sys- 
ijem  of  government ;  "  so  harsh  and  cruel  was  he  that  none 
dared  withstand  his  will.  Earls  that  did  aught  against 
his  bidding  he  cast  into  bonds;  bishops  he  stripped  of 
their  bishoprics,  abbots  of  their  abbacies.  He  spared 
not  his  own  brother:  first  he  was  in  the  land,  but  the 
King  cast  him  into  bondage.  If  a  man  would  live  and 
hold  his  lands,  need  it  were  he  followed  the  King's  will." 
Stern  as  such  a  rule  was,  its  sternness  gave  rest  to  the 


Cbap.  1.]       UNDER  FOIIEIGN  KINGfS.     1071—1214.  135 

land.  Even  amid  the  sufferings  which  necessarily 
sprang  from  the  circumstances  of  the  Conquest  itself, 
from  the  erection  of  castles  or  the  enclosure  of  forests  or 
the  exactions  which  built  up  William's  hoard  at  Winches- 
ter, Englishmen  were  unable  to  forget  "  the  good  peace  he 
made  in  the  land,  so  that  a  man  might  fare  over  his  realm 
with  a  bosom  full  of  gold."  Strange  touches  too  of  a  hu- 
manity far  in  advance  of  his  age  contrasted  with  this 
general  temper  of  the  Conqueror's  government.  One  of 
the  strongest  traits  in  his  character  was  an  aversion  to 
shed  blood  by  process  of  law ;  he  formally  abolished  the 
punishment  of  death,  and  only  a  single  execution  stains 
the  annals  of  his  reign.  An  edict  yet  more  honorable  to 
his  humanity  put  an  end  to  the  slave-trade  which  had  till 
then  been  carried  on  at  the  port  of  Bristol.  The  contrast 
between  the  ruthlessness  and  pitifulness  of  his  public  acts 
sprang  indeed  from  a  contrast  within  his  temper  itself. 
The  pitiless  warrior,  the  stern  and  aweful  king  was  a  ten- 
der and  faithful  husband,  an  affectionate  father.  The 
lonely  silence  of  his  bearing  broke  into  gracious  converse 
with  pure  and  sacred  souls  like  Anselm.  If  William  was 
"  stark"  to  rebel  and  baron,  men  noted  that  he  was  "  mild 
to  those  that  loved  God." 

But  the  greatness  of  the  Conqueror  was  seen  in  more 
than  the  order  and  peace  which  he  imposed  upon  the  land. 
Fortune  had  given  him  one  of  the  greatest  opportunities 
ever  offered  to  a  king  of  stamping  his  own  genius  on  the 
destinies  of  a  people ;  and  it  is  the  way  in  which  he  seized 
on  this  opportunity  which  has  set  William  among  the 
foremost  statesmen  of  the  world.  The  struggle  which 
ended  in  the  fens  of  Ely  had  wholly  changed  his  position. 
He  no  longer  held  the  land  merely  as  its  national  and 
elected  King.  To  his  elective  right  he  added  the  right  of 
conquest.  It  is  the  way  in  which  William  grasped  and 
employed  this  double  power  that  marks  the  originality  of 
his  political  genius,  for  the  system  of  government  which 
he  devised  was  in  fact  the  result  of  this  double  origin  of 


136  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  XL 

his  rule.  It  represented  neither  the  purely  feudal  system 
of  the  Continent  nor  the  system  of  the  older  English  roy- 
alty :  more  truly  perhaps  it  may  be  said  to  have  repre- 
sented both.  As  the  conqueror  of  England  William  de- 
veloped the  military  organization  of  feudalism  so  far  as 
was  necessary  for  the  secure  possession  of  his  conquests. 
The  ground  was  already  prepared  for  such  an  organiza- 
tion. We  have  watched  the  beginnings  of  English  feud- 
alism in  the  warriors,  the  "  companions"  or  "  thegns" 
who  were  personally  attached  to  the  king's  war-band  and 
received  estates  from  the  folkland  in  reward  for  their  per- 
sonal services.  In  later  times  this  feudal  distribution  of 
estates  had  greatly  increased  as  the  bulk  of  the  nobles  fol- 
lowed the  king's  example  and  bound  their  tenants  to 
themselves  by  a  similar  process  of  subinfeudation.  The 
pure  freeholders  on  the  other  hand,  the  class  which  formed 
the  basis  of  the  original  English  society,  had  been  gradu- 
ally reduced  in  number,  partly  through  imitation  of  the 
class  above  them,  but  more  through  the  pressure  of  the 
Danish  wars  and  the  social  disturbance  consequent  upon 
them,  which  forced  these  freemen  to  seek  protectors  among 
the  thegns  at  the  cost  of  their  independence.  Even  before 
the  reign  of  William,  therefore,  feudalism  was  superseding 
the  older  freedom  in  England  as  it  had  already  superseded 
it  in  Germany  or  France.  But  the  tendency  was  quick- 
ened and  intensified  by  the  Conquest.  The  desperate  and 
universal  resistance  of  the  country  forced  William  to  hold 
by  the  sword  what  the  sword  had  won ;  and  an  army 
strong  enough  to  crush  at  any  moment  a  national  revolt 
was  needful  for  the  preservation  of  his  throne.  Such  an 
army  could  only  be  maintained  by  a  vast  confiscation  of 
the  soil,  and  the  failure  of  the  English  risings  cleared  the 
ground  for  its  establishment.  The  greater  part  of  the 
higher  nobility  fell  in  battle  or  fled  into  exile,  while  the 
lower  thegnhood  either  forfeited  the  whole  of  their  lands 
or  redeemed  a  portion  by  the  surrender  of  the  rest.  We 
aee  the  completeness  of  the  confiscation  in  the  vast  estates 


Chap.  1.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  137 

which  William  was  enabled  to  grant  to  his  more  powerful 
followers.  Two  hundred  manors  in  Kent  with  more  than 
an  equal  number  elsewhere  rewarded  the  services  of  his 
brother  Odo,  and  grants  almost  as  large  fell  to  William's 
counsellors  Fitz-Osbern  and  Montgomery  or  to  barons  like 
the  Mowbrays  and  the  Clares.  But  the  poorest  soldier  of 
fortune  found  his  part  in  the  spoil.  The  meanest  Nor- 
man rose  to  wealth  and  power  in  this  new  dominion  of 
his  lord.  Great  or  small,  each  manor  thus  granted  was 
granted  on  condition  of  its  holder's  service  at  the  King's 
call ;  a  whole  army  was  by  this  means  encamped  upon  the 
soil;  and  William's  summons  could  at  any  hour  gather  an 
overwhelming  force  around  his  standard. 

Such  a  force  however,  effective  as  it  was  against  the 
conquered  English,  was  hardly  less  formidable  to  the 
Crown  itself.  When  once  it  was  established,  William 
found  himself  fronted  in  his  new  realm  by  a  feudal  bar- 
onage, by  the  men  whom  he  had  so  hardly  bent  to  his  will 
in  Normandy,  and  who  were  as  impatient  of  law,  as  jeal- 
ous of  the  royal  power,  as  eager  for  an  unbridled  military 
and  judicial  independence  within  their  own  manors,  here 
as  there.  The  political  genius  of  the  Conqueror  was 
shown  in  his  appreciation  of  this  danger  and  in  the  skill 
with  which  he  met  it.  Large  as  the  estates  he  granted 
were,  they  were  scattered  over  the  country  in  such  a  way 
as  to  render  union  between  the  great  landowners  or  the 
hereditary  attachment  of  great  areas  of  population  to  any 
one  separate  lord  equally  impossible.  A  j^et  wiser  meas- 
ure struck  at  the  very  root  of  feudalism.  When  the  larger 
holdings  were  divided  by  their  owners  into  smaller  sub- 
tenancies, the  under-tenants  were  bound  by  the  same  condi- 
tions of  service  to  their  lord  as  he  to  the  Crown.  "  Hear, 
my  lord,"  swore  the  vassal,  as  kneeling  bareheaded  and 
without  arms  he  placed  his  hands  within  those  of  his 
superior,  "I  become  liege  man  of  yours  for  life  and  limb 
and  earthly  regard ;  and  I  will  keep  faith  and  loyalty  to 
you  for  life  and  death,  God  help  me !"     Then  the  kiss  of 


138  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  IL 

his  lord  invested  him  with  land  as  a  "  fief"  to  descend  to 
him  and  his  heirs  forever.  In  other  countries  such  a  vas- 
sal owed  fealty  to  his  lord  against  all  foes,  be  they  king 
or  no.  By  the  usage,  however,  which  William  enacted  in 
England  each  sub-tenant,  in  addition  to  his  oath  of  fealty 
to  his  lord,  swore  fealty  directly  to  the  Crown,  and  loyalty 
to  the  King  was  thus  established  as  the  supreme  and  uni- 
versal duty  of  all  Englishmen. 

But  the  Conqueror's  skill  was  shown  not  so  much  in 
these  inner  checks  upon  feudalism  as  in  the  counterbal- 
ancing forces  which  he  provided  without  it.  He  was  not 
only  the  head  of  the  great  garrison  that  held  England 
down,  he  was  legal  and  elected  King  of  the  English  people. 
If  as  Conqueror  he  covered  the  country  with  a  new  mili- 
tary organization,  as  the  successor  of  Eadward  he  main- 
tained the  judicial  and  administrative  organization  of  the 
old  English  realm.  At  the  danger  of  a  severance  of  the 
land  between  the  greater  nobles  he  struck  a  final  blow  by 
the  abolition  of  the  four  great  earldoms.  The  shire  be- 
came the  largest  unit  of  local  government,  and  in  each 
shire  the  royal  nomination  of  sheriffs  for  its  administra- 
tion concentrated  the  whole  executive  power  in  the  King's 
hands.  The  old  legal  constitution  of  the  country  gave 
him  the  whole  judicial  power,  and  William  was  jealous 
to  retain  and  heighten  this.  While  he  preserved  the  local 
courts  of  the  hundred  and  the  shire  he  strengthened  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  King's  Court,  which  seems  even  in  the 
Confessor's  day  to  have  become  more  and  more  a  court  of 
highest  appeal  with  a  right  to  call  up  all  cases  from  any 
lower  jurisdiction  to  its  bar.  The  control  over  the  national 
revenue  which  had  rested  even  in  the  most  troubled  times 
in  the  hands  of  the  King  was  turned  into  a  great  financial 
power  by  the  Conqueror's  system.  Over  the  whole  face 
of  the  land  a  large  part  of  the  manors  were  burthened  with 
special  dues  to  the  Crown  :  and  it  was  for  the  purpose  of 
ascertaining  and  recording  these  that  William  sent  into 
each  county  the  commissioners  whosie  inquiries  are  re- 


Chap.  1.]      UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1314.  139 


corded  in  his  Domesday  Book.  A  jury  empanelled  in  each 
hundred  declared  on  oath  the  extent  and  nature  of  each 
estate,  the  names,  number,  and  condition  of  its  inhabi- 
tants, its  value  before  and  after  the  Conquest,  and  the 
sums  due  from  it  to  the  Crown.  These,  with  the  Dane- 
geld  or  land-tax  levied  since  the  days  of  -(Ethelred,  formed 
as  yet  the  main  financial  resources  of  the  Crown,  and  their 
exaction  carried  the  royal  authority  in  its  most  direct 
form  home  to  every  landowner.  But  to  these  were  added 
a  revenue  drawn  from  the  old  Crown  domain,  now  largely 
increased  by  the  confiscations  of  the  Conquest,  the  ever- 
growing income  from  the  judicial  "  fines"  imposed  by  the 
King's  judges  in  the  King's  courts,  and  the  fees  and  re- 
demptions paid  to  the  Crown  on  the  grant  or  renewal  of 
every  privilege  or  charter.  A  new  source  of  revenue  was 
found  in  the  Jewish  traders,  many  of  whom  followed  Wil- 
liam from  Normandy,  and  who  were  glad  to  pay  freely 
for  the  royal  protection  which  enabled  them  to  settle  in 
their  quarters  or  "  Jewries"  in  all  the  principal  towns  of 
England. 

William  found  a  yet  stronger  check  on  his  baronage  in 
the  organization  of  the  Church.  Its  old  dependence  on 
the  royal  power  was  strictly  enforced.  Prelates  were 
practically  chosen  by  the  King.  Homage  was  exacted 
from  bishop  as  from  baron.  No  royal  tenant  could  be  ex- 
communicated save  by  the  King's  leave.  No  synod  could 
legislate  without  his  previous  assent  and  subsequent  con- 
firmation of  its  decrees.  No  papal  letters  could  be  received 
within  the  realm  save  by  his  permission.  The  King 
firmly  repudiated  the  claims  which  were  beginning  to  be 
put  forward  by  the  court  of  Rome.  When  Gregory  VII. 
called  on  him  to  do  fealty  for  his  kingdom  the  King  sternly 
refused  to  admit  the  claim.  "  Fealty  I  have  never  willed 
to  do,  nor  will  I  do  it  now.  I  have  never  promised  it, 
nor  do  I  find  that  my  predecessors  did  it  to  yours."  Wil- 
liam's reforms  only  tended  to  tighten  this  hold  of  tho 
Crown  on  the  clergy.     Stigand  was  deposed ;  and  the  el»- 


140  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  II. 

vation  of  Lanfranc  to  the  see  of  Canterbury  was  followed 
by  the  removal  of  most  of  the  English  prelates  and  by  the 
appointment  of  Norman  ecclesiastics  in  their  place.  The 
new  archbishop  did  much  to  restore  discipline,  and  Wil- 
liam's own  efforts  were  no  doubt  partly  directed  by  a  real 
desire  for  the  religious  improvement  of  his  realm.  But 
the  foreign  origin  of  the  new  prelates  cut  them  off  from 
the  flocks  they  ruled  and  bound  them  firmly  to  the  foreign 
throne;  while  their  independent  position  was  lessened  by 
a  change  which  seemed  intended  to  preserve  it.  Ecclesi- 
astical cases  had  till  now  been  decided,  like  civil  cases,  in 
shire  or  hundred-court,  where  the  bishop  sat  side  by  side 
with  ealdorman  or  sheriff.  They  were  now  withdrawn 
from  it  to  the  separate  court  of  the  bishop.  The  change 
was  pregnant  with  future  trouble  to  the  Crown ;  but  for 
the  moment  it  told  mainly  in  removing  the  bishop  from 
his  traditional  contact  with  the  popular  assembly  and  in 
effacing  the  memory  of  the  original  equality  of  the  relig- 
ious with  the  civil  power. 

In  any  struggle  with  feudalism  a  national  king,  secure 
of  the  support  of  the  Church,  and  backed  by  the  royal 
hoard  at  Winchester,  stood  in  different  case  from  the 
merely  feudal  sovereigns  of  the  Continent.  The  difference 
of  power  was  seen  as  soon  as  the  Conquest  was  fairly  over 
and  the  struggle  which  William  had  anticipated  opened 
between  the  baronage  and  the  Crown.  The  wisdom  of 
his  policy  in  the  destruction  of  the  great  earldoms  which 
had  overshadowed  the  throne  was  shown  in  an  attempt  at 
their  restoration  made  in  1075  by  Eoger,  the  son  of  his 
minister  William  Fitz-Osbern,  and  by  the  Breton,  Ralf 
de  Guader,  whom  the  King  had  rewarded  for  his  services 
at  Senlac  with  the  earldom  of  Norfolk.  The  rising  was 
quickly  suppressed,  Roger  thrown  into  prison,  and  Ralf 
driven  over  sea.  The  intrigues  of  the  baronage  soon 
found  another  leader  in  William's  half-brother,  the  Bishop 
of  Bayeux.  Under  pretence  of  aspiring  by  arms  to  the 
papacy  Bishop   Odo  collected  money  and  men,  but  the 


Chap.  1.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     lOTl— 1214.  141 

treasure  was  at  once  seized  by  the  royal  officers  and  the 
Bishop  arrested  in  the  midst  of  the  court.  Even  at  the 
King's  bidding  no  officer  would  venture  to  seize  on  a  prel- 
ate of  the  Church ;  and  it  was  with  his  own  hands  that 
Willram  was  forced  to  effect  his  arrest.  The  Conqueror 
was  as  successful  against  foes  from  without  as  against 
foes  from  within.  The  fear  of  the  Danes,  which  had  so 
long  hung  like  a  thunder-cloud  over  England,  passed 
away  before  the  host  which  William  gathered  in  1085  to 
meet  a  great  armament  assembled  by  King  Cnut.  A 
mutiny  dispersed  the  Danish  fleet,  and  the  murder  of  its 
King  removed  all  peril  from  the  North.  Scotland,  already 
humbled  by  William's  invasion,  was  bridled  by  the  erec' 
tion  of  a  strong  fortress  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne;  and 
after  penetrating  with  his  army  to  the  heart  of  Wales  the 
King  commenced  its  systematic  reduction  by  settling  three 
of  his  great  barons  along  its  frontier.  It  was  not  till  his 
closing  years  that  William's  unvarjnng  success  was  trou- 
bled by  a  fresh  outbreak  of  the  Norman  baronage  under 
his  son  Kobert  and  by  an  attack  which  he  was  forced  to 
meet  in  1087  from  France.  Its  King  mocked  at  the  Con- 
queror's unwieldy  bulk  and  at  the  sickness  which  bound 
him  to  his  bed  at  Rouen.  "  King  William  has  as  long  a 
lying-in,"  laughed  Philip,  "as  a  woman  behind  her  cur- 
tains." "When  I  get  up,"  William  swore  grimly,  "I 
will  go  to  mass  in  Philip's-land  and  bring  a  rich  offering 
for  my  churching.  I  will  offer  a  thousand  candles  for  my 
fee.  Flaming  brands  shall  they  be,  and  steel  shall  glitter 
over  the  fire  they  make. "  At  harvest- tide  town  and  ham- 
let flaring  into  ashes  along  the  French  border  fulfilled  the 
ruthless  vow.  But  as  the  King  rode  down  the  steep  street 
of  Mantes  which  he  had  given  to  the  flames  his  horse 
stumbled  among  the  embers,  and  William  was  flung 
heavily  against  his  saddle.  He  was  borne  home  to  Rouen 
to  die.  The  sound  of  the  minster  bell  Avoke  him  at  dawn 
as  he  lay  in  the  convent  of  St.  Gervais,  overlooking  the 
city — it  was  the  hour  of  prime — and  stretching  out  his 


142  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

hands  in  prayer  the  King  passed  quietly  away.  Death 
itself  took  its  color  from  the  savage  solitude  of  his  life. 
Priests  and  nobles  fled  as  the  last  breath  left  him,  and  the 
Conqueror's  body  lay  naked  and  lonely  on  the  floor. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  NORMAN  KINGS. 
1085—1154. 

With  the  death  of  the  Conqueror  passed  the  terror 
which  had  held  the  barons  in  awe,  while  the  severance  of 
his  dominions  roused  their  hopes  of  successful  resistance 
to  the  stern  rule  beneath  which  they  had  bowed.  William 
bequeathed  Normandy  to  his  eldest  son  Robert ;  but  Wil- 
liam the  Red,  his  second  son,  hastened  with  his  father's 
ring  to  England  where  the  influence  of  Lanfranc  secured 
him  the  crown.  The  baronage  seized  the  opportunity  to 
rise  in  arms  under  pretext  of  supporting  the  claims  of 
Robert,  whose  weakness  of  character  gave  full  scope  for 
the  growth  of  feudal  independence ;  and  Bishop  Odo,  now 
freed  from  prison,  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  the  revolt. 
The  new  King  was  thrown  almost  wholly  on  the  loyalty 
of  his  English  subjects.  But  the  national  stamp  which 
William  had  given  to  his  kingship  told  at  once.  The 
English  rallied  to  the  royal  standard ;  Bishop  Wulfstan 
of  Worcester,  the  one  surviving  Bishop  of  English  blood, 
defeated  the  insurgents  in  the  West;  while  the  King, 
summoning  the  freemen  of  country  and  town  to  his  host 
under  pain  of  being  branded  as  "  nithing"  or  worthless, 
advanced  with  a  large  force  against  Rochester  where  the 
barons  were  concentrated.  A  plague  which  broke  out 
among  the  garrison  forced  them  to  capitulate,  and  as  the 
prisoners  passed  through  the  royal  army  cries  of  "  gallows 
and  cord"  burst  from  the  English  ranks.  The  failure  of 
a  later  conspiracy  whose  aim  was  to  set  on  the  throne  a 
kinsman  of  the  royal  house,  Stephen  of  Albemarle,  with 
the  capture  and  imprisonment  of  its  head,  Robert  Mow- 


144  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

bray,  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  brought  home  at  last 
to  the  baronage  their  helplessness  in  a  strife  with  the  King. 
The  genius  of  the  Conqueror  had  saved  England  from  the 
danger  of  feudalism.  But  he  had  left  as  weighty  a  dan- 
ger in  the  power  which  trod  feudalism  under  foot.  The 
power  of  the  Crown  was  a  purely  personal  power,  restrained 
under  the  Conqueror  by  his  own  high  sense  of  duty,  but 
capable  of  becoming  a  pure  despotism  in  the  hands  of  his 
sou.  The  nobles  were  at  his  feet,  and  the  policy  of  his 
minister,  Bishop  Flambard  of  Durham,  loaded  their  estates 
with  feudal  obligations.  Each  tenant  was  held  as  bound 
to  appear  if  needful  thrice  a  year  at  the  royal  court,  to 
pay  a  heavy  fine  or  rent  on  succession  to  his  estate,  to 
contribute  aid  in  case  of  the  King's  capture  in  war  or  the 
knighthood  of  the  King's  eldest  son  or  the  marriage  of  his 
eldest  daughter.  An  heir  who  was  still  a  minor  passed 
into  the  King's  wardship,  and  all  profit  from  his  lands 
went  during  the  period  of  wardship  to  the  King.  If  the 
estate  fell  to  an  heiress,  her  hand  was  at  the  King's  dis- 
posal and  was  generally  sold  by  him  to  the  highest  bidder. 
These  rights  of  "  marriage"  and  "  wardship"  as  well  as  the 
exaction  of  aids  at  the  roj^al  will  poured  wealth  into  the 
treasury  while  they  impoverished  and  fettered  the  baron- 
age. A  fresh  source  of  revenue  was  found  in  the  Church. 
The  same  principles  of  feudal  dependence  were  applied  to 
its  lands  as  to  those  of  the  nobles ;  and  during  the  vacancy 
of  a  see  or  abbey  its  profits,  like  those  of  a  minor,  were 
swept  into  the  royal  hoard.  William's  profligacy  and 
extravagance  soon  tempted  him  to  abuse  this  resource, 
and  so  steadily  did  he  refuse  to  appoint  successors  to  prel- 
ates whom  death  removed  that  at  the  close  of  his  reign 
one  archbishopric,  four  bishoprics,  and  eleven  abbeys 
were  found  to  be  without  pastors. 

Vile  as  was  this  system  of  extortion  and  misrule  but  a 
single  voice  was  raised  in  protest  against  it.  Lanfranc 
had  been  followed  in  his  abbey  at  Bee  by  the  most  famoiis 
of  his  scholars,  Anselm  of  Aosta,  an  Italian  like  himself. 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  145 

Friends  as  they  were,  no  two  men  could  be  more  strangely 
unlike.  Anselm  had  grown  to  manhood  in  the  quiet  soli- 
tude of  his  mountain-valley,  a  tender-hearted  poet-dreamer, 
with  a  soul  pure  as  the  Alpine  snows  above  him,  and  an> 
intelligence  keen  and  clear  as  the  mountain-air.  The 
whole  temper  of  the  man  was  painted  in  a  dream  of  his 
youth.  It  seemed  to  him  as  though  heaven  lay,  a  stately 
palace,  amid  the  gleaming  hill-peaks,  while  the  women 
reaping  in  the  corn-fields  of  the  valley  became  harvest- 
maidens  of  its  King.  They  reaped  idly,  and  Anselm, 
grieved  at  their  sloth,  hastily  climbed  the  mountain  side 
to  accuse  them  to  their  lord.  As  he  reached  the  palace 
the  King's  voice  called  him  to  his  feet  and  he  poured  forth 
his  tale ;  then  at  the  royal  bidding  bread  of  an  unearthly 
whiteness  was  set  before  him,  and  he  ate  and  was  re- 
freshed. The  dream  passed  with  the  morning ;  but  the 
sense  of  heaven's  nearness  to  earth,  the  fervid  loyalty  to 
the  service  of  his  Lord,  the  tender  restfulness  and  peace 
in  the  Divine  presence  which  it  reflected  lived  on  in  the 
life  of  Anselm.  Wandering  like  other  Italian  scholars  to 
Normandy,  he  became  a  monk  under  Lanfranc,  and  on  his 
teacher's  removal  to  higher  duties  succeeded  him  in  the 
direction  of  the  Abbey  of  Bee.  No  teacher  has  ever 
thrown  a  greater  spirit  of  love  into  his  toil.  "  Force  your 
scholars  to  improve !"  he  burst  out  to  another  teacher  who 
relied  on  blows  and  compulsion.  "  Did  you  ever  see  a 
craftsman  fashion  a  fair  image  out  of  a  golden  plate  by 
blows  alone?  Does  he  not  now  gently  press  it  and  strike 
it  with  his  tools,  now  with  wise  art  yet  more  gently  raise 
and  shape  it?  "What  do  your  scholars  turn  into  under 
this  ceaseless  beating?"  "They  turn  only  brutal,"  was 
the  reply.  "You  have  bad  luck,"  was  the  keen  answer, 
"in  a  training  that  only  turns  men  into  beasts."  The 
worst  natures  softened  before  this  tenderness  and  patience. 
Even  the  Conqueror,  so  harsh  and  terrible  to  others,  be- 
came another  man,  gracious  and  easy  of  speech,  with 
A.nselm.  But  amid  his  absorbing  cares  as  a  teacher,  the 
Vol.  I.— 10 


146  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  II. 

—       ■■■'  '  ■■■■—-- . ''■'■■■"■  ^ 

Prior  of  Bee  found  time  for  philosophical  speculations  to 
which  we  owe  the  scientific  inquiries  which  built  up  the 
theology  of  the  middle  ages.  His  famous  works  were  the 
first  attempts  of  any  Christian  thinker  to  elicit  the  idea 
of  God  from  the  very  nature  of  the  human  reason.  His 
passion  for  abstruse  thought  robbed  him  of  food  and  sleep. 
Sometimes  he  could  hardl}'  pray.  Often  the  night  was  a 
long  watch  till  he  could  seize  his  conception  and  write  it 
on  the  wax  tablets  which  lay  beside  him.  But  not  even  a 
fever  of  intense  thought  such  as  this  could  draw  Anselm's 
heart  from  its  passionate  tenderness  and  love.  Sick  monks 
in  the  infirmary  could  relish  no  drink  save  the  juice  which 
his  hand  squeezed  for  them  from  the  grape-bunch.  In 
the  later  days  of  his  archbishopric  a  hare  chased  by  the 
hounds  took  refuge  under  his  horse,  and  his  gentle  voice 
grew  loud  as  he  forbade  a  huntsman  to  stir  in  the  chase 
while  the  creature  darted  off  again  to  the  woods.  Even 
the  greed  of  lands  for  the  Church  to  which  so  many  relig- 
ious men  yielded  found  its  characteristic  rebuke  as  the 
battling  lawj'ers  in  such  a  suit  saw  Anselm  quietly  close 
bis  eyes  in  court  and  go  peacefully  to  sleep. 

A  sudden  impulse  of  the  Red  King  drew  the  abbot  from 
these  quiet  studies  into  the  storms  of  the  world.  The  see 
of  Canterbury  had  long  been  left  without  a  Primate  when 
a  dangerous  illness  frightened  the  King  into  the  promo- 
tion of  Anselm.  The  Abbot,  who  happened  at  the  time 
to  be  in  England  on  the  business  of  his  house,  was  dragged 
to  the  royal  couch  and  the  cross  forced  into  his  hands. 
But  William  had  no  sooner  recovered  from  his  sickness 
than  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with  an  opponent  whose 
meek  and  loving  temper  rose  into  firmness  and  grandeur 
when  it  fronted  the  tyranny  of  the  King.  Much  of  the 
struggle  between  William  and  the  Archbishop  turned  on 
questions  such  as  the  right  of  investiture,  which  have 
little  bearing  on  our  history,  but  the  particular  question 
at  issue  was  of  less  importance  than  the  fact  of  a  contest 
at  all.     The  boldness  of  Anselm's  attitude  not  only  broke 


Chap.  2.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  147 

the  tradition  of  ecclesiastical  servitude  but  infused  through 
the  nation  at  large  a  new  spirit  of  independence.  The  real 
character  of  the  strife  appears  in  the  Primate's  answer 
when  his  remonstrances  against  the  lawless  exactions 
from  the  Church  were  met  by  a  demand  for  a  present  on 
his  own  promotion,  and  his  first  offer  of  five  hundred 
pounds  was  contemptuously  refused.  "  Treat  me  as  a  free 
man,"  Anselm  replied,  "and  I  devote  mj'self  and  all  that 
I  have  to  your  service,  but  if  you  treat  me  as  a  slave  you 
shall  have  neither  me  nor  mine."  A  burst  of  the  Red 
King's  fury  drove  the  Archbishop  from  court,  and  he 
finally  decided  to  quit  the  country,  but  his  example  had 
not  been  lost,  and  the  close  of  William's  reign  found  a 
new  spirit  of  freedom  in  England  with  which  the  greatest 
of  the  Conqueror's  sons  was  glad  to  make  terms.  His 
exile,  however,  left  WiUiam  without  a  check.  Supreme  at 
home,  he  was  fuU  of  ambition  abroad.  As  a  soldier  the 
Red  King  was  little  inferior  to  his  father.  Normandy 
had  been  pledged  to  him  by  his  brother  Robert  in  exchange 
for  a  sum  which  enabled  the  Duke  to  march  in  the  first 
Crusade  for  the  delivery  of  the  Holy  Land,  and  a  rebellion 
at  Le  Mans  was  subdued  by  the  fierce  energy  with  which 
William  flung  himself  at  the  news  of  it  into  the  first  boat 
he  found,  and  crossed  the  Channel  in  face  of  a  storm. 
"Kings  never  drown,"  he  replied  contemptuously  to  the 
remonstrances  of  his  followers.  Homage  was  again 
wrested  from  Malcolm  by  a  march  to  the  Firth  of  Forth, 
and  the  subsequent  death  of  that  king  threw  Scotland  into 
a  disorder  which  enabled  an  army  under  Eadgar  ^theling 
to  establish  Edgar,  the  son  of  Margaret,  as  an  English 
feudatory  on  the  throne.  In  Wales  William  was  less  tri- 
umphant, and  the  terrible  losses  inflicted  on  the  heavy 
Norman  cavalry  in  the  fastnesses  of  Snowdon  forced 
him  to  fall  back  on  the  slower  but  wiser  policy  of 
the  Conqueror.  But  triumph  and  defeat  alike  ended 
in  a  strange  and  tragical  close.  In  1100  the  Red  King 
was  found  dead  by  peasants  in  a  glade  of  the  New  Forest, 


14  S  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

with  the  arrow  either  of  a  hunter  or  an  assassin  in  his 
breast. 

Robert  was  at  this  moment  on  his  return  from  the  Holy 
Land,  where  his  bravery  had  redeemed  much  of  his  earlier 
ill-fame,  and  the  English  crown  was  seized  by  his  younger 
brother  Henry  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  baronage, 
who  clung  to  the  Duke  of  Normandy  and  the  union  of 
their  estates  on  both  sides  the  Channel  under  a  single 
ruler.  Their  attitude  threw  Henry,  as  it  had  thrown 
Rufus,  on  the  support  of  the  English,  and  the  two  great 
measures  which  followed  his  coronation,  his  grant  of  a 
charter,  and  his  marriage  with  Matilda,  mark  the  new  re- 
lation which  this  support  brought  about  between  the  peo- 
ple and  their  King.  Henry's  Charter  is  important,  not 
merely  as  a  direct  precedent  for  the  Great  Charter  of 
John,  but  as  the  first  limitation  on  the  despotism  estab- 
lished by  the  Conqueror  and  carried  to  such  a  height  by 
his  son.  The  "  evil  customs"  by  which  the  Red  King  had 
enslaved  and  plundered  the  Church  were  explicitly  re- 
nounced in  it,  the  unlimited  demands  made  by  both  the 
Conqueror  and  his  son  on  the  baronage  exchanged  for  cus- 
tomary fees,  while  the  rights  of  the  people  itself,  though 
recognized  more  vaguely,  were  not  forgotten.  The  barons 
were  held  to  do  justice  to  their  under-tenants  and  to  re- 
nounce tyrannical  exactions  from  them,  the  King  promis- 
ing to  restore  order  and  the  "law  of  Eadward,"  the  old 
constitution  of  the  realm,  with  the  changes  which  his 
father  had  introduced.  His  marriage  gave  a  significance 
to  these  promises  which  the  meanest  English  peasant 
could  understand.  Edith,  or  Matilda,  was  the  daughter 
of  King  Malcolm  of  Scotland  and  of  Margaret,  the  sister 
of  Eadgar  ^theling.  She  had  been  brought  up  in  the 
nunnery  of  Romsey  by  its  abbess,  her  aunt  Christina,  and 
the  veil  which  she  had  taken  there  formed  an  obstacle  to 
her  union  with  the  King  which  was  only  removed  by  the 
wisdom  of  Anselm.  While  Flambard,  the  embodiment 
of  the  Red  King's  despotism,  was  thrown  into  the  Tower, 


Chap.  2.]      UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  149 


the  Archbishop's  recall  had  been  one  of  Henry's  first  acts 
after  his  accession.  Matilda  appeared  before  his  court  to 
tell  her  tale  in  words  of  passionate  earnestness.  She  bad 
been  veiled  in  her  childhood,  she  asserted,  only  to  save 
her  from  the  insults  of  the  rude  soldiery  who  infested  the 
land,  had  flung  the  veil  from  her  again  and  again,  and 
had  yielded  at  last  to  the  unwomanly  taunts,  the  actual 
blows  of  her  aunt.  "As often  as  I  stood  in  her  presence," 
the  girl  pleaded,  "  I  wore  the  veil,  trembling  as  I  wore  it 
with  indignation  and  grief.  But  as  soon  as  I  could  get 
out  of  her  sight  I  used  to  snatch  it  from  my  head,  fling  it 
on  the  ground,  and  trample  it  under  foot.  That  was  the 
way,  and  none  other,  in  which  I  was  veiled."  Anselm  at 
once  declared  her  free  from  conventual  bonds,  and  the 
shout  of  the  English  multitude  when  he  set  the  crown  on 
Matilda's  brow  drowned  the  murmur  of  Churchman  or  of 
baron.  The  mockery  of  the  Norman  nobles,  who  nick- 
named the  King  and  his  spouse  Godric  and  Godgifu,  was 
lost  in  the  joy  of  the  people  at  large.  For  the  first  time 
since  the  Conquest  an  English  sovereign  sat  on  the  Eng- 
lish throne.  The  blood  of  Cerdic  and  Alfred  was  to  blend 
itself  with  that  of  Rolf  and  the  Conqueror.  Henceforth 
it  was  impossible  that  the  two  peoples  should  remain 
parted  from  each  other;  so  quick  indeed  was  their  union 
that  the  very  name  of  Norman  had  passed  away  in  half  a 
century,  and  at  the  accession  of  Henry's  grandson  it  was 
impossible  to  distinguish  between  the  descendants  of  the 
conquerors  and  those  of  the  conquered  at  Senlac. 

Charter  and  marriage  roused  an  enthusiasm  among  his 
subjects  which  enabled  Henry  to  defy  the  claims  of  his 
brother  and  the  disaffection  of  his  nobles.  Early  in  1101 
Robert  landed  at  Portsmouth  to  win  the  crown  in  arms. 
The  great  barons  with  hardly  an  exception  stood  aloof 
from  the  King.  But  the  Norman  Duke  found  himself 
face  to  face  with  an  English  army  which  gathered  at 
Anselm's  summons  round  Henry's  standard.  The  temper 
of  the  English  had  rallied  from  the  panic  of  Senlac.     The 


150  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IL 

soldiers  who  came  to  fight  for  their  King  "  nowise  feared 
the  Normans. "  As  Henry  rode  along  their  lines  showing 
them  how  to  keep  firm  their  shield-wall  against  the  lances 
of  Robert's  knighthood,  he  was  met  with  shouts  for  battle. 
But  King  and  Duke  alike  shrank  from  a  contest  in  which 
the  victory  of  either  side  would  have  undone  the  Con- 
queror's work.  The  one  saw  his  effort  was  hopeless,  the 
other  was  only  anxious  to  remove  his  rival  from  the  realm, 
and  by  a  peace  which  the  Count  of  Meulan  negotiated 
Robert  recognized  Henry  as  King  of  England  while  Henry 
gave  up  his  fief  in  the  Cotentin  to  his  brother  the  Duke. 
Robert's  retreat  left  Henry  free  to  deal  sternly  with  the 
barons  who  had  forsaken  him.  Robert  de  Lacy  was 
stripped  of  his  manors  in  Yorkshire ;  Robert  Malet  was 
driven  from  his  lands  in  Suffolk ;  Ivo  of  Grantmesnil  lost 
his  vast  estates  and  went  to  the  Holy  Land  as  a  pilgrim. 
But  greater  even  than  these  was  Robert  of  Belesme,  the 
son  of  Roger  of  Montgomery,  who  held  in  England  the 
earldoms  of  Shrewsbury  and  Arundel,  while  in  Normandy 
he  was  Count  of  Ponthieu  and  Alengon.  Robert  stood  at 
the  head  of  the  baronage  in  wealth  and  power :  and  his 
summons  to  the  King's  Court  to  answer  for  his  refusal  of 
aid  to  the  King  was  answered  by  a  haughty  defiance. 
But  again  the  Norman  baronage  had  to  feel  the  strength 
which  English  loyalty  gave  to  the  Crown.  Sixty  thousand 
Englishmen  followed  Henry  to  the  attack  of  Robert's 
strongholds  along  the  Welsh  border.  It  was  in  vain  that 
the  nobles  about  the  King,  conscious  that  Robert's  fall  left 
them  helpless  in  Henry's  hands,  strove  to  bring  about  a 
peace.  The  English  soldiers  shouted  "Heed  not  these 
traitors,  our  lord  King  Henry, "  and  with  the  people  at  his 
back  the  King  stood  firm.  Only  an  early  surrender  saved 
Robert's  life.  He  was  suffered  to  retire  to  his  estates  in 
Normandy,  but  his  English  lands  were  confiscated  to  the 
Crown.  "Rejoice,  King  Henry,"  shouted  the  English 
soldiers,  "  for  you  began  to  be  a  free  King  on  that  day 
when  you  conquered  Robert  of  Belesme  and  drove  him 


Chaf.  2.]       TMDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  151 

from  the  land. "  Master  of  his  own  realm  and  enriched 
by  the  confiscated  lands  of  the  ruined  barons  Henry  crossed 
into  Normandj%  where  the  misgovernment  of  the  Duke 
had  alienated  the  clergy  and  tradesfolk,  and  where  the 
outrages  of  nobles  like  Robert  of  Belesme  forced  the  more 
peaceful  classes  to  call  the  King  to  their  aid.  In  1106  his 
forces  met  those  of  his  brother  on  the  field  of  Tenchebray, 
and  a  decisive  English  victory  on  Norman  soil  avenged 
the  shame  of  Hastings.  The  conquered  duchy  became  a 
dependency  of  the  English  crown,  and  Henry's  energies 
were  frittered  away  through  a  quarter  of  a  century  in 
crushing  its  revolts,  the  hostility  of  the  French,  and  the 
efforts  of  his  nephew  William,  the  son  of  Robert,  to  regain 
the  crown  which  his  father  had  lost. 

W  ith  the  victory  of  Tenchebray  Henry  was  free  to  enter 
on  that  work  of  administration  which  was  to  make  his 
reign  memorable  in  our  history.  Successful  as  his  wars 
had  been  he  was  in  heart  no  warrior  but  a  statesman,  and 
his  greatness  showed  itself  less  in  the  field  than  in  the 
council  chamber.  His  outer  bearing  like  his  inner  temper 
stood  in  marked  contrast  to  that  of  his  father.  Well  read, 
accomplished,  easy  and  fluent  of  speech,  the  lord  of  a 
harem  of  mistresses,  the  centre  of  a  gay  court  where  poet 
and  jongleur  found  a  home,  Henry  remained  cool,  self- 
possessed,  clear-sighted,  hard,  methodical,  loveless  him- 
self, and  neither  seeking  nor  desiring  his  people's  love, 
but  wringing  from  them  their  gratitude  and  regard  by 
sheer  dint  of  good  government.  His  work  of  order  was 
necessarily  a  costly  work ;  and  the  steady  pressure  of  his 
taxation,  a  pressure  made  the  harder  by  local  famines  and 
plagues  during  his  reign,  has  left  traces  of  the  grumbling 
it  roused  in  the  pages  of  the  English  Chronicle.  But  even 
the  Chronicler  is  forced  to  own  amid  his  grumblings 
that  Henry  "  was  a  good  man,  and  great  was  the  awe  of 
him."  He  had  little  of  his  father's  creative  genius,  of 
that  far-reaching  originality  by  which  the  Conqueror 
stamped  himself  ^nd  his  will  on  the  very  fabric  of  our 


153  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 


history.  But  he  had  the  passion  for  order,  the  love  of 
justice,  the  faculty  of  organization,  the  power  of  steady 
and  unwavering  rule,  which  was  needed  to  complete  the 
Conqueror's  work.  His  aim  was  peace,  and  the  title  of 
the  Peace-loving  King  which  was  given  him  at  his  death 
showed  with  what  a  steadiness  and  constancy  he  carried 
out  his  aim.  In  Normandy  indeed  his  work  was  ever  and 
anon  undone  by  outbreaks  of  its  baronage,  outbreaks 
sternly  repressed  only  that  the  work  might  be  patiently 
and  calmly  taken  up  again  where  it  had  been  broken  off. 
But  in  England  his  will  was  carried  out  with  a  perfect 
success.  For  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  land 
had  rest.  Without,  the  Scots  were  held  in  friendship,  the 
Welsh  were  bridled  by  a  steady  and  well-planned  scheme 
of  gradual  conquest.  Within,  the  license  of  the  baronage 
was  held  sternly  down,  and  justice  secured  for  all.  "  He 
governed  with  a  strong  hand,"  says  Orderic,  but  the  strong 
hand  was  the  hand  of  a  king,  not  of  a  tyrant.  "  Great 
was  the  awe  of  him,"  writes  the  annalist  of  Peterborough. 
"  No  man  durst  ill-do  to  another  in  his  days.  Peace  he 
made  for  man  and  beast. "  Pitiless  as  were  the  blows  he 
aimed  at  the  nobles  who  withstood  him,  they  were  blows 
which  his  English  subjects  felt  to  be  struck  in  their  cause. 
"  While  he  mastered  by  policy  the  foremost  counts  and 
lords  and  the  boldest  tyrants,  he  ever  cherished  and  pro- 
tected peaceful  men  and  men  of  religion  and  men  of  the 
middle  class."  What  impressed  observers  most  was  the 
unswerving,  changeless  temper  of  his  rule.  The  stern 
justice,  the  terrible  punishment  he  inflicted  on  all  who 
broke  his  laws,  were  parts  of  a  fixed  system  which  differed 
widely  from  the  capricious  severity  of  a  mere  despot. 
Hardly  less  impressive  was  his  unvarying  success.  Heavy 
as  were  the  blows  which  destiny  levelled  at  him,  Henry 
bore  and  rose  unconquered  from  all.  To  the  end  of  his 
life  the  proudest  barons  lay  bound  and  blinded  in  his 
prison.  His  hoard  grew  greater  and  greater.  Normandy, 
toss  as  she  might,  lay  helpless  at  his  feet  to  the  last.     In 


Chap.  2.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.    1071—1314.  153 

England  it  was  only  after  his  death  that  men  dared  mutter 
what  evil  things  they  had  thought  of  Henry  the  Peace- 
lover,  or  censure  the  pitilessness,  the  greed,  and  the  lust 
which  had  blurred  the  wisdom  and  splendor  of  his  rule. 

His^  vigorous  administration  carried  out  into  detail  the 
system  of  government  which  the  Conqueror  had  sketched. 
The  vast  estates  which  had  fallen  to  the  crown  through 
revolt  and  forfeiture  were  granted  out  to  new  men  depend- 
ent on  royal  favor.  On  the  ruins  of  the  great  feudatories 
whom  he  had  crushed  Henry  built  up  a  class  of  lesser 
nobles,  whom  the  older  barons  of  the  Conquest  looked 
down  on  in  scorn,  but  who  were  strong  enough  to  form  a 
counterpoise  to  their  influence  while  they  furnished  the 
Crown  with  a  class  of  useful  administrators  whom  Henry 
employed  as  his  sheriffs  and  judges.  A  new  organization 
of  justice  and  finance  bound  the  kingdom  more  tightly 
together  in  Henry's  grasp.  The  Clerks  of  the  Royal 
Chapel  were  formed  into  a  body  of  secretaries  or  royal 
ministers,  whose  head  bore  the  title  of  Chancellor.  Above 
them  stood  the  Justiciar,  or  Lieutenant- General  of  the 
kingdom,  who  in  the  frequent  absence  of  the  King  acted 
as  Regent  of  the  realm,  and  whose  staff,  selected  from  the 
barons  connected  with  the  royal  household,  were  formed 
into  a  Supreme  Court  of  the  realm.  The  King's  Court, 
as  this  was  called,  permanently  represented  the  whole 
court  of  ro3"al  vassals  which  had  hitherto  been  summoned 
thrice  in  the  year.  As  the  royal  council,  it  revised  and 
registered  laws,  and  its  "counsel  and  consent,"  though 
merely  formal,  preserved  the  principle  of  the  older  popular 
legislation.  As  a  court  of  justice  it  formed  the  highest 
court  of  appeal ;  it  could  call  up  any  suit  from  a  lower 
tribunal  on  the  application  of  a  suitor,  while  the  union  of 
several  sheriffdoms  under  some  of  its  members  connected 
it  closely  with  the  local  courts.  As  a  financial  body,  its 
chief  work  lay  in  the  assessment  and  collection  of  the 
revenue.  In  this  capacity  it  took  the  name  of  the  Court 
of  Exchequer  from  the  checkered  table,  much  like  a  chess- 


154  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [BoOK  II. 

board,  at  which  it  sat  and  on  which  accounts  were  ren- 
dered. In  their  financial  capacity  its  justices  became 
"  barons  of  the  Exchequer."  Twice  every  year  the  sheriff 
of  each  county  appeared  before  these  barons  and  rendered 
the  sum  of  the  fixed  rent  from  royal  domains,  the  Dane- 
geld  or  land  tax,  the  fines  of  the  local  courts,  the  feudal 
aids  from  the  baronial  estates,  which  formed  the  chief 
part  of  the  royal  revenue.  Local  disputes  respecting  these 
payments  or  the  assessment  of  the  town-rents  were  settled 
by  a  detachment  of  barons  from  the  court  who  made  the 
circuit  of  the  shires,  and  whose  fiscal  visitations  led  to  the 
judicial  visitations,  the  "judges'  circuits,"  which  still 
form  so  marked  a  feature  in  our  legal  system. 

Measures  such  as  these  changed  the  whole  temper  of 
the  Norman  rule.  It  remained  a  despotism,  but  from 
this  moment  it  was  a  despotism  regulated  and  held  in 
check  by  the  forms  of  administrative  routine.  Heavy 
as  was  the  taxation  under  Henry  the  First,  terrible  as  was 
the  suffering  throughout  his  reign  from  famine  and  plague, 
the  peace  and  order  which  his  government  secured  through 
thirty  years  won  a  rest  for  the  land  in  which  conqueror 
and  conquered  blended  into  a  single  people  and  in  which 
this  people  slowly  moved  forward  to  a  new  freedom.  But 
while  England  thus  rested  in  peace  a  terrible  blow  broke 
the  fortunes  of  her  King.  In  1120  his  son,  William  the 
"-^theling,"  with  a  crowd  of  nobles  accompanied  Henry 
on  bis  return  from  Normandy;  but  the  white  ship  in 
which  he  embarked  lingered  behind  the  rest  of  the  royal 
fleet  till  the  guards  of  the  King's  treasure  pressed  its  de- 
parture. It  had  hardly  cleared  the  harbor  when  the  ship's 
side  struck  on  a  rock,  and  in  an  instant  it  sank  beneath 
the  waves.  One  terrible  cry,  ringing  through  the  silence 
of  the  night,  was  heard  by  the  royal  fleet;  but  it  was  not 
till  the  morning  that  the  fatal  news  reached  the  King. 
Stern  as  he  was,  Henry  fell  senseless  to  the  ground,  and 
rose  never  to  smile  again.  He  had  no  other  son,  and  the 
circle  of  his  foreign  foes  closed  round  him  the  more  fiercely 


Chap.  2.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071-1214.  155 

that  William,  the  son  of  his  captive  brother  Robert,  was 
now  his  natural  heir,  Henry  hated  William  while  he 
loved  his  own  daughter  Maud,  who  had  been  married  to 
the  Emperor  Henry  the  Fifth,  but  who  had  been  restored 
by  his  death  to  her  father's  court.  The  succession  of  a 
woman  was  new  in  English  history ;  it  was  strange  to  a 
feudal  baronage.  But  when  all  hope  of  issue  from  a  sec- 
ond wife  whom  he  wedded  was  over  Henry  forced  priests 
and  nobles  to  swear  allegiance  to  Maud  as  their  future 
mistress,  and  affianced  her  to  Geoffry  the  Handsome,  the 
son  of  the  one  foe  whom  he  dreaded.  Count  Fulk  of  Anjou. 
The  marriage  of  Matilda  was  but  a  step  in  the  wonder- 
ful history  by  which  the  descendants  of  a  Breton  wood- 
man became  masters  not  of  Anjou  only,  but  of  Touraine, 
Maine,  and  Poitou,  of  Gascony  and  Auvergne,  of  Aqui- 
taine  and  Normandy,  and  sovereigns  at  last  of  the  great 
realm  which  Normandy  had  won.  The  legend  of  the 
father  of  their  races  carries  us  back  to  the  times  of  our  own 
,^lfred,  when  the  Danes  were  ravaging  along  Loire  as 
they  ravaged  along  Thames.  In  the  heart  of  the  Breton 
border,  in  the  debatable  land  between  France  and  Brit- 
tany, dwelt  Tortulf  the  Forester,  half-brigand,  half-hunter 
as  the  gloomy  days  went,  living  in  free  outlaw-fashion  in 
the  woods  about  Rennes.  Tortulf  had  learned  in  his 
rough  forest  school  "  how  to  strike  the  foe,  to  sleep  on  the 
bare  ground,  to  bear  hunger  and  toil,  summer's  heat  and 
winter's  frost,  how  to  fear  nothing  save  ill-fame."  Fol- 
lowing King  Charles  the  Bald  in  his  struggle  with  the 
Danes,  the  woodman  won  broad  lands  along  Loire,  and 
his  son  Ingelgor,  who  had  swept  the  Northmen  from 
Touraine  and  the  land  to  the  west,  which  they  had  burned 
and  wasted  into  a  vast  solitude,  became  the  first  Count  of 
Anjou.  But  the  tale  of  Tortulf  and  Ingelger  is  a  mere 
creation  of  some  twelfth-century  jongleur.  The  earliest 
Count  whom  history  recognizes  is  Fulk  the  Red.  Fulk 
attached  himself  to  the  Dukes  of  France  who  were  now 
drawing  nearer  to  the  throne,  and  in  888  received  from 


156  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

them  in  guerdon  the  western  portion  of  Anjou  which  lay 
across  the  Mayenne.  The  story  of  his  son  is  a  story  of 
peace,  breaking  like  a  quiet  idyl  the  war-storms  of  his 
house.  Alone  of  his  race  Fulk  the  Good  waged  no  wars : 
his  delight  was  to  sit  in  the  choir  of  Tours  and  to  be  called 
"Canon."  One  Martinmas  eve  Fulk  was  singing  there 
in  clerkly  guise  when  the  French  King,  Lewis  d'Outre- 
mer,  entered  the  church.  "He  sings  like  a  priest," 
laughed  the  King  as  his  nobles  pointed  mockingly  to  the 
figure  of  the  Count-Canon.  But  Fulk  was  ready  with  his 
reply.  "Know,  my  lord,"  wrote  the  Count  of  Anjou, 
"that  a  King  unlearned  is  a  crowned  ass."  Fulk  was  in 
fact  no  priest,  but  a  busy  ruler,  governing,  enforcing 
peace,  and  carrying  justice  to  every  corner  of  the  wasted 
land.  To  him  alone  of  his  race  men  gave  the  title  of  "  the 
Good." 

Hampered  by  revolt,  himself  in  character  little  more 
than  a  bold,  dashing  soldier,  Fulk's  son,  Geoffry  Grey- 
gown,  sank  almost  into  a  vassal  of  his  powerful  neighbors, 
the  Counts  of  Blois  and  Champagne.  But  this  vassalage 
was  roughly  shaken  off  by  his  successor.  Fulk  Nerra, 
Fulk  the  Black,  is  the  greatest  of  the  Angevins,  the  first 
in  whom  we  can  trace  that  marked  type  of  character 
which  their  house  was  to  preserve  through  two  hundred 
years.  He  was  without  natural  affection.  In  his  youth 
he  burned  a  wife  at  the  stake,  and  legend  told  how  he  led 
her  to  her  doom  decked  out  in  his  gayest  attire.  In  his 
old  age  he  waged  his  bitterest  war  against  his  son,  and 
exacted  from  him  when  vanquished  a  humiliation  which 
men  reserved  for  the  deadliest  of  their  foes.  "  You  ai-e 
conquered,  you  are  conquered!"  shouted  the  old  man  in 
fierce  exultation,  as  Geoffry,  bridled  and  saddled  like  a 
beast  of  burden,  crawled  for  pardon  to  his  father's  feet. 
In  Fulk  first  appeared  that  low  type  of  superstition  which 
startled  even  superstitious  ages  in  the  early  Plantagenets. 
Robber  as  he  was  of  Church  lands,  and  contemptuous  of 
ecclesiastical  censures,  the  fear  of  the  end  of  the  world 


Ohap.  2.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  157 

drove  Fulk  to  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  Barefoot  and  with  the 
strokes  of  the  scourge  falling  heavily  on  his  shoulders,  the 
Count  had  himself  dragged  by  a  halter  through  the  streets 
of  Jerusalem,  and  courted  the  doom  of  martyrdom  by  his 
wild  otitcries  of  penitence.  He  rewarded  the  fidelity  of 
Herbert  of  Le  Mans,  whose  aid  saved  him  from  utter  ruin, 
by  entrapping  him  into  captivity  and  robbing  him  of  his 
lands.  He  secured  the  terrified  friendship  of  the  French 
King  by  despatching  twelve  assassins  to  cut  down  before 
his  eyes  the  minister  who  had  troubled  it.  Familiar  as 
the  age  was  with  treason  and  rapine  and  blood,  it  recoiled 
from  the  cool  cynicism  of  his  crimes,  and  believed  the 
wrath  of  Heaven  to  have  been  revealed  against  the  union 
of  the  worst  forms  of  evil  in  Fulk  the  Black.  But  neither 
the  wrath  of  Heaven  nor  the  curses  of  men  broke  with  a 
single  mishap  the  fifty  years  of  his  success. 

At  his  accession  in  987  Anjou  was  the  least  important 
of  the  greater  provinces  of  France.  At  his  death  in  1040 
it  stood,  if  not  in  extent,  at  least  in  real  power,  first  among 
them  all.  Cool-headed,  clear-sighted,  quick  to  resolve, 
quicker  to  strike,  Fulk's  career  was  one  long  series  of  vic- 
tories over  all  his  rivals.  He  was  a  consummate  general, 
and  he  had  the  gift  of  personal  bravery,  which  was  denied 
to  some  of  his  greatest  descendants.  There  was  a  moment 
in  the  first  of  his  battles  when  the  day  seemed  lost  for 
Anjou ;  a  feigned  retreat  of  the  Bretons  drew  the  Angevin 
horsemen  into  a  line  of  hidden  pitfalls,  and  the  Count 
himself  was  flung  heavily  to  the  ground.  Dragged  from 
the  medley  of  men  and  horses,  he  swept  down  almost 
singly  on  the  foe  "  as  a  storm-wind"  (so  rang  the  paean  of 
the  Angevins)  "sweeps  down  on  the  thick  corn-rows," 
and  the  field  was  won.  But  to  these  qualities  of  the  war- 
rior he  added  a  power  of  political  organization,  a  capacity 
for  far-reaching  combinations,  a  faculty  of  statesmanship, 
which  became  the  heritage  of  his  race,  and  lifted  them  as 
high  above  the  intellectual  level  of  the  rulers  of  their  time 
as  their  shameless  wickedness  degraded  them  below  the 


158  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  XL 

level  of  man.  His  overthrow  of  Brittany  on  the  field  of 
Conquereux  was  followed  by  the  gradual  absorption  of 
Southern  Touraine;  a  victory  at  Pontlevoi  crushed  the 
rival  house  of  Blois;  the  seizure  of  Saumur  completed  his 
conquests  in  the  south,  while  Northern  Touraine  was  won 
bit  by  bit  till  only  Tours  resisted  the  Angevin.  The 
treacherous  seizure  of  its  Count,  Herbert  Wakedog,  left 
Maine  at  his  mercy. 

His  work  of  conquest  was  completed  by  his  son.  Geoffry 
Martel  wrested  Tours  from  the  Count  of  Blois,  and  by  the 
seizure  of  Le  Mans  brought  his  border  to  the  Norman 
frontier.  Here  however  his  advance  was  checked  by  the 
genius  of  William  the  Conqueror,  and  with  his  death  the 
greatness  of  Anjou  came  for  a  while  to  an  end.  Stripped 
of  Maine  by  the  Normans  and  broken  by  dissensions  with- 
in, the  weak  and  profligate  rule  of  Fulk  Rechin  left  Anjou 
powerless.  But  in  1109  it  woke  to  fresh  energy  with  the 
accession  of  his  son,  Fulk  of  Jerusalem.  Now  urging  the 
turbulent  Norman  nobles  to  revolt,  now  supporting 
Robert's  son,  William,  in  his  strife  with  his  uncle,  offer- 
ing himself  throughout  as  the  loyal  supporter  of  the 
French  kingdom  which  was  now  hemmed  in  on  almost 
every  side  by  the  forces  of  the  English  king  and  of  his 
allies  the  Counts  of  Blois  and  Champagne,  Fulk  was  the 
one  enemy  whom  Henry  the  First  really  feared.  It  was 
to  disanii  his  restless  hostility  that  the  King  gave  the 
hand  of  Matilda  to  Geoffry  the  Handsome.  But  the  ha- 
tred between  Norman  and  Angevin  had  been  too  bitter  to 
make  such  a  marriage  popular,  and  the  secrecy  with 
which  it  was  brought  about  was  held  by  the  barons  to  free 
them  from  the  oath  they  had  previously  sworn.  As  no 
baron  if  he  was  sonless  could  give  a  husband  to  his 
daughter  save  with  his  lord's  consent,  the  nobles  held  by 
a  strained  analogy  that  their  own  assent  was  needful  to 
the  marriage  of  Maud.  Henr}^  found  a  more  pressing 
danger  in  the  greed  of  her  husband  Geoffry,  whose  habit 
of   wearing  the  common   broom    of    Anjou,  the  planta 


Chap.  2.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214  159 

genista,  in  his  helmet  gave  him  the  title  of  Plantagenet. 
His  claims  ended  at  last  in  intrigues  with  the  Norman 
nobles,  and  Henry  hurried  to  the  border  to  meet  an  Ange- 
vin invasion ;  but  the  plot  broke  do^vn  at  his  presence,  the 
Angevins  retired,  and  at  the  close  of  1135  the  old  King 
withdrew  to  the  Forest  of  Lj'ons  to  die. 

"God  give  him,"  wrote  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen  from 
Henry's  death-bed,  "the  peace  he  loved."  With  him  in- 
deed closed  the  long  peace  of  the  Norman  rule.  An  out- 
burst of  anarchy  followed  on  the  news  of  his  departure, 
and  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil  Earl  Stephen,  his  nephew, 
appeared  at  the  gates  of  London.  Stephen  was  a  son  of 
the  Conqueror's  daughter,  Adela,  who  had  married  a 
Count  of  Blois ;  he  had  been  brought  up  at  the  English 
court,  had  been  made  Count  of  Mortain  by  Henry,  had 
become  Count  of  Boulogne  by  his  marriage,  and  as  head 
of  the  Norman  baronage  had  been  the  first  to  pledge  him- 
self to  support  Matilda's  succession.  But  his  own  claim 
as  nearest  male  heir  of  the  Conqueror's  blood  (for  his 
cousin,  the  son  of  Robert,  had  fallen  some  years  before  in 
Flanders)  was  supported  by  his  personal  popularity ;  mere 
swordsman  as  he  was,  his  good-humor,  hia  generosity,  his 
very  prodigality  made  Stephen  a  favorite  with  all.  No 
noble,  however,  had  as  yet  ventured  to  join  him  nor  had 
any  town  opened  its  gates  when  London  poured  out  to 
meet  him  with  uproarious  welcome.  Neither  baron  nor 
prelate  was  present  to  constitute  a  National  Council,  but 
the  great  city  did  not  hesitate  to  take  their  place.  The 
voice  of  her  citizens  had  long  been  accepted  as  representa- 
tive of  the  popular  assent  in  the  election  of  a  king ;  but  it 
marks  the  progress  of  English  independence  under  Henry 
that  London  now  claimed  of  itself  the  right  of  election. 
Undismayed  by  the  absence  of  the  hereditary  counsellors 
of  the  crown  its  "  Aldermen  and  wise  folk  gathered  to- 
gether the  folkmoot,  and  these  providing  at  their  own  will 
for  the  good  of  the  realm  unanimously  resolved  to  choose 
a  king. "     The  solemn  deliberation  ended  in  the  choice  of 


160  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  XL 

Stephen,  the  citizens  swore  to  defend  the  King  with  money 
and  blood,  Stephen  swore  to  apply  his  whole  strength  to 
the  pacification  and  good  government  of  the  realm.  It 
was  in  fact  the  new  union  of  conquered  and  conquerors 
into  a  single  England  that  did  Stephen's  work.  The  suc- 
cession of  Maud  meant  the  rule  of  GeofiPry  of  Anjou,  and 
to  Norman  as  to  Englishman  the  rule  of  the  Angevin  was 
a  foreign  rule.  The  welcome  Stephen  won  at  London  and 
Winchester,  his  seizure  of  the  royal  treasure,  the  adhe- 
sion of  the  Justiciar  Bishop  Roger  to  his  cause,  the  reluc- 
tant consent  of  the  Archbishop,  the  hopelessness  of  aid 
from  Anjou  where  Geoffry  was  at  this  moment  pressed 
by  revolt,  the  need  above  all  of  some  king  to  meet  the  out- 
break of  anarchy  which  followed  Henry's  death,  secured 
Stephen  the  voice  of  the  baronage.  He  was  crowned  at 
Christmas-tide ;  and  soon  joined  by  Robert  Earl  of  Glou- 
cester, a  bastard  son  of  Henry  and  the  chief  of  his  nobles ; 
while  the  issue  of  a  charter  from  Oxford  in  1136,  a  charter 
which  renewed  the  dead  King's  pledge  of  good  govern- 
ment, promised  another  Henry  to  the  realm.  The  charter 
surrendered  all  forests  made  in  the  last  reign  as  a  sop  to 
the  nobles,  it  conciliated  the  Church  by  granting  freedom 
of  election  and  renouncing  all  right  to  the  profits  of  vacant 
churches,  it  won  the  people  by  a  pledge  to  abolish  the  tax 
of  Danegeld. 

The  king's  first  two  years  were  years  of  success  and 
prosperity.  Two  risings  of  barons  in  the  east  and  west 
were  easily  put  down,  and  in  1137  Stephen  passed  into 
Normandy  and  secured  the  Duchy  against  an  attack  from 
Anjou.  But  already  the  elements  of  trouble  were  gather- 
ing round  him.  Stephen  was  a  mere  soldier,  with  few 
kingly  qualities  save  that  of  a  soldier's  bravery ;  and  the 
realm  soon  began  to  slip  from  his  grasp.  He  turned 
against  himself  the  jealous  dread  of  foreigners  to  which 
he  owed  his  accession  by  surrounding  himself  with  hired 
knights  from  Flanders ;  he  drained  the  treasury  by  creat- 
ing new  earls  endowed  with  pensions  from  it,  and  recruited 


Chap.  2.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  161 

his  means  by  base  coinage.  His  consciousness  of  the 
gathering  storm  only  drove  Stephen  to  bind  his  friends  to 
him  by  suffering  them  to  fortify  castles  and  to  renew  the 
feudal  tyranny  which  Henry  had  struck  down.  But  the 
long  reign  of  the  dead  king  had  left  the  Crown  so  strong 
that  even  yet  Stephen  could  hold  his  own.  A  plot  which 
Robert  of  Gloucester  had  been  weaving  from  the  outset  of 
his  reign  came  indeed  to  a  head  in  1138,  and  the  Earl's 
revolt  stripped  Stephen  of  Caen  and  half  Normandy.  But 
when  his  partisans  in  England  rose  in  the  south  and  the 
west  and  the  King  of  Scots,  whose  friendship  Stephen  had 
bought  in  the  opening  of  his  reign  by  the  cession  of  Car- 
lisle, poured  over  the  northern  border,  the  nation  stood 
firmly  by  the  King.  Stephen  himself  marched  on  the 
western  rebels  and  soon  left  them  few  strongholds  save 
Bristol.  His  people  fought  for  him  in  the  north.  The 
pillage  and  cruelties  of  the  wild  tribes  of  Galloway  and 
the  Highlands  roused  the  spirit  of  the  Yorkshiremen. 
Baron  and  freeman  gathered  at  York  round  Archbishop 
Thurstan  and  marched  to  the  field  of  Northallerton  to 
await  the  foe.  The  sacred  banners  of  St.  Cuthbert  of 
Durham,  St.  Peter  of  York,  St.  John  of  Beverley,  and  St. 
Wilfred  of  Ripon  hung  from  a  pole  fixed  in  a  four-wheeled 
car  which  stood  in  the  centre  of  the  host.  The  first  onset 
of  David's  host  was  a  terrible  one.  "  I  who  wear  no  ar- 
mor," shouted  the  chief  of  the  Galwegians,  "will  go  as 
far  this  day  as  any  one  with  breastplate  of  mail ;"  his  men 
charged  with  wild  shouts  of  "Albin,  Albin,"  and  were 
followed  by  the  Norman  knighthood  of  the  Lowlands. 
But  their  repulse  was  complete ;  the  fierce  hordes  dashed 
in  vain  against  the  close  English  ranks  around  the  Stand- 
ard, and  the  whole  army  fled  in  confusion  to  Carlisle. 

Weak  indeed  as  Stephen  was,  the  administrative  organi- 
zation of  Henry  still  did  its  work.  Roger  remained  justi- 
ciar, his  son  was  chancellor,  his  nephew  Nigel,  the  Bishop 
of  Ely,  was  treasurer.  Finance  and  justice  were  thus 
concentrated  in  the  hands  of  a  single  family  which  pre* 
Vol.  L— 11 


1C2  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

served  amid  the  deepening  misrule  something  of  the  old 
order  and  rule,  and  which  stood  at  the  head  of  the  "  new 
men,"  whom  Henry  had  raised  into  importance  and  made 
the  instruments  of  his  will.  These  new  men  were  still 
weak  by  the  side  of  the  older  nobles ;  and  conscious  of  the 
jealousy  and  ill-will  with  which  they  were  regarded  they 
followed  in  self-defence  the  example  which  the  barons 
were  setting  in  building  and  fortifying  castles  on  their 
domains.  Roger  and  his  house,  the  objects  from  their 
oflScial  position  of  a  deeper  grudge  than  any,  were  carried 
away  by  the  panic.  The  justiciar  and  his  son  fortified 
their  castles,  and  it  was  only  with  a  strong  force  at  their 
back  that  the  prelates  appeared  at  court.  Their  attitude 
was  one  to  rouse  Stephen's  jealousy,  and  the  news  of 
Matilda's  purpose  of  invasion  lent  strength  to  the  doubts 
which  the  nobles  cast  on  their  fidelity.  All  the  weak 
violence  of  the  King's  temper  suddenly  broke  out.  He 
seized  Roger  the  Chancellor  and  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln 
when  they  appeared  at  Oxford  in  June,  1139,  and  forced 
them  to  surrender  their  strongholds.  Shame  broke  the 
justiciar's  heart;  he  died  at  the  close  of  the  year,  and  his 
nephew  Nigel  of  Ely  was  driven  from  the  realm.  But  the 
fall  of  this  house  shattered  the  whole  system  of  govern- 
ment. The  King's  court  and  the  Exchequer  ceased  to 
work  at  a  moment  when  the  landing  of  Earl  Robert  and 
the  Empress  Matilda  set  Stephen  face  to  face  with  a  dan- 
ger greater  than  he  had  yet  encountered,  while  the  clergy, 
alienated  by  the  arrest  of  the  Bishops  and  the  disregard  of 
their  protests,  stood  angrily  aloof. 

The  three  bases  of  Henry's  system  of  government,  the 
subjection  of  the  baronage  to  the  law,  the  good-will  of  the 
Church,  and  the  organization  of  justice  and  finance,  were 
now  utterly  ruined ;  and  for  the  seventeen  years  which 
passed  from  this  hour  to  the  Treaty  of  Wallingford  Eng- 
land was  given  up  to  the  miseries  of  civil  war.  The 
country  was  divided  between  the  adherents  of  the  two 
rivals,  the  West  supporting  Matilda,  London  and  the  East 


Chap.  2.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1314  163 

Stephen.  A  defeat  at  Lincoln  in  1141  left  the  latter  a 
captive  in  the  hands  of  his  enemies,  while  Matilda  was 
received  throughout  the  land  as  its  "  Lady."  But  the  dis- 
dain with  which  she  repulsed  the  claim  of  London  to  the 
enjoyment  of  its  older  privileges  called  its  burghers  to 
arms ;  her  resolve  to  hold  Stephen  a  prisoner  roused  his 
party  again  to  life,  and  she  was  driven  to  Oxford  to  be 
besieged  there  in  1142  by  Stephen  himself,  who  had  ob- 
tained his  release  in  exchange  for  Earl  Robert  after  the 
capture  of  the  Earl  in  a  battle  at  Devizes.  She  escaped 
from  the  castle,  but  with  the  death  of  Robert  her  struggle 
became  a  hopeless  one,  and  in  1146  she  withdrew  to  Nor- 
mandy. The  war  was  now  a  mere  chaos  of  pillage  and 
bloodshed.  The  royal  power  came  to  an  end.  The  royal 
courts  were  suspended,  for  not  a  baron  or  bishop  would 
come  at  the  King's  call.  The  bishops  met  in  council  to 
protest,  but  their  protests  and  excommunications  fell  on 
deafened  ears.  For  the  first  and  last  time  in  her  history 
England  was  in  the  hands  of  the  baronage,  and  their  out- 
rages showed  from  what  horrors  the  stern  rule  of  the 
Norman  kings  had  saved  her.  Castles  sprang  up  every- 
where. "They  filled  the  land  with  castles,"  says  the  ter- 
rible annalist  of  the  time.  "  They  greatly  oppressed  the 
wretched  people  by  making  them  work  at  these  castles, 
and  when  they  were  finished  they  filled  them  with  devils 
and  armed  men."  In  each  of  these  robber-holds  a  petty 
tyrant  ruled  like  a  king.  The  strife  for  the  Crown  had 
broken  into  a  medley  of  feuds  between  baron  and  baron, 
for  none  could  brook  an  equal  or  a  superior  in  his  fellow. 
"  They  fought  among  themselves  with  deadly  hatred,  they 
spoiled  the  fairest  lands  with  fire  and  rapine ;  in  what  had 
been  the  most  fertile  of  counties  they  destroyed  almost  all 
the  provision  of  bread."  For  fight  as  they  might  with 
one  another,  all  were  at  one  in  the  plunder  of  the  land. 
Towns  were  put  to  ransom.  Villages  were  sacked  and 
burned.  All  who  were  deemed  to  have  goods,  whether 
men  or  women,  were  carried  off  and  flung  into  dungeons 


164  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

.  — - — ^ ■ • 

and  tortured  till  they  yielded  up  their  wealth.  No  ghast- 
lier picture  of  a  nation's  misery  has  ever  been  painted 
than  that  which  closes  the  English  Chronicle  whose  last 
accents  falter  out  amid  the  horrors  of  the  time.  "  They 
hanged  up  men  by  their  feet  and  smoked  them  with  foul 
smoke.  Some  were  hanged  up  by  their  thumbs,  others  by 
the  head,  and  burning  things  were  hung  on  to  their  feet. 
They  put  knotted  strings  about  men's  heads,  and  writhed 
them  till  they  went  to  the  brain.  They  put  men  into  pris- 
ons where  adders  and  snakes  and  toads  were  crawling, 
and  so  they  tormented  them.  Some  they  put  into  a  chest 
short  and  narrow  and  not  deep  and  that  had  sharp  stones 
within,  and  forced  men  therein  so  that  they  broke  all  their 
limbs.  In  many  of  the  castles  were  hateful  and  grim 
things  called  rachenteges,  which  two  or  three  men  had 
enough  to  do  to  carry.  It  was  thus  made :  it  was  fastened 
to  a  beam  and  had  a  sharp  iron  to  go  about  a  man's  neck 
and  throat,  so  that  he  might  noways  sit,  or  lie,  or  sleep, 
but  he  bore  all  the  iron.  Many  thousands  they  starved 
with  hunger." 

It  was  only  after  years  of  this  feudal  anarchy  that  Eng- 
land was  rescued  from  it  by  the  efforts  of  the  Church. 
The  political  influence  of  the  Church  had  been  greatly 
lessened  by  the  Conquest:  for  pious,  learned,  and  ener- 
getic as  the  bulk  of  the  Conqueror's  bishops  were,  they 
were  not  Englishmen.  Till  the  reign  of  Henry  the  First 
no  iilnglishman  occupied  an  English  see.  This  severance 
of  the  higher  clergy  from  the  lower  priesthood  and  from 
the  people  went  far  to  paralyze  the  constitutional  influence 
of  the  Church.  Anselm  stood  alone  against  Rufus,  and 
when  Anselm  was  gone  no  voice  of  ecclesiastical  freedom 
broke  the  silence  of  the  reign  of  Henry  the  First.  But 
at  the  close  of  Henry's  reign  and  throughout  the  reign  of 
Stephen  England  was  stirred  by  the  first  of  those  great 
religious  movements  which  it  was  to  experience  afterward 
in  the  preaching  of  the  Friars,  the  Lollardism  of  Wyclif, 
the  Reformation,  the  Puritan  enthusiasm,  and  the  missioa 


Chap.  2.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214  165 

work  of  the  Wesley s.  Everywhere  in  town  and  country 
men  banded  themselves  together  for  prayer :  hermits  flocked 
to  the  woods :  noble  and  churl  welcomed  the  austere  Cis- 
tercians, a  reformed  offshoot  of  the  Benedictine  order,  as 
they  ^read  over  the  moors  and  forests  of  the  North.  A 
new  spirit  of  devotion  woke  the  slumbers  of  the  religious 
houses,  and  penetrated  alike  to  the  home  of  the  noble  and 
the  trader.  London  took  its  full  share  in  the  revival. 
The  city  was  proud  of  its  religion,  its  thirteen  conventual 
and  more  than  a  hundred  parochial  churches.  The  new 
Impulse  changed  its  very  aspect.  In  the  midst  of  the  city 
TJishop  Richard  busied  himself  with  the  vast  cathedral 
ohurch  of  St.  Paul  which  Bishop  Maurice  had  begun; 
barges  came  up  the  river  with  stone  from  Caen  for  the 
great  arches  that  moved  the  popular  wonder,  while  street 
and  lane  were  being  levelled  to  make  room  for  its  famous 
churchyard.  Rahere,  a  minstrel  at  Henry's  court,  raised 
the  Priory  of  Saint  Bartholomew  beside  Smithfield.  Al- 
fune  built  St.  Giles'  at  Crippegate.  The  old  English 
Cnichtenagild  surrendered  their  soke  of  Aldgate  as  a  site 
for  the  new  priory  of  the  Holy  Trinity.  The  tale  of  this 
house  paints  admirably  the  temper  of  the  citizens  at  the 
time.  Its  founder.  Prior  Norman,  built  church  and  clois- 
ter and  bought  books  and  vestments  in  so  liberal  a  fashion 
that  no  money  remained  to  buy  bread.  The  canons  were 
at  their  last  gasp  when  the  city-folk,  looking  into  the  re- 
fectory as  they  passed  round  the  cloister  in  their  usual 
Sunday  procession,  saw  the  tables  laid  but  not  a  single 
loaf  on  them.  "  Here  is  a  fine  set-out,"  said  the  citizens; 
"  but  where  is  the  bread  to  come  from?"  The  women  who 
were  present  vowed  each  to  bring  a  loaf  every  Sunday, 
and  there  was  soon  bread  enough  and  to  spare  for  the  pri- 
ory and  its  priests. 

We  see  the  strength  of  the  new  movement  in  the  new 
class  of  ecclesiastics  whom  it  forced  on  to  the  stage.  Men 
like  Archbishop  Theobald  drew  whatever  influence  they 
wielded  from  a  belief  in  their  holiness  of  life  and  unselfish* 


166  HISTORY  OF  THE  EXGLISTi  PEOPLE.       [Book  IL 

ness  of  aim.  The  paralysis  of  the  Church  ceased  as  the 
new  impulse  bound  prelacj'  and  people  together,  and  at 
the  moment  we  have  reached  its  power  was  found  strong 
enough  to  wrest  England  out  of  the  chaos  of  feudal  mis- 
rule. In  the  early  part  of  Stephen's  reign  his  brother 
Henry,  the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  who  had  been  appointed 
in  1139  Papal  Legate  for  the  realm,  had  striven  to  supply 
the  absence  of  any  royal  or  national  authority  by  conven- 
ing synods  of  bishops,  and  by  asserting  the  moral  right  of 
the  Church  to  declare  sovereigns  unworthy  of  the  throne. 
The  compact  between  king  and  people  which  became  a 
part  of  constitutional  law  in  the  Charter  of  Henry  had 
gathered  new  force  in  the  Charter  of  Stephen,  but  its  legit- 
imate consequence  in  the  responsibility  of,  the  crown  for 
the  execution  of  the  compact  was  first  drawn  out  by  these 
ecclesiastical  councils.  From  their  alternate  depositions 
of  Stephen  and  Matilda  flowed  the  after-depositions  of 
Edward  and  Richard  and  the  solemn  act  by  which  the 
succession  was  changed  in  the  case  of  James.  Extrava- 
gant and  unauthorized  as  their  expression  of  it  may  ap- 
pear, they  expressed  the  right  of  a  nation  to  good  govern- 
ment. Henry  of  Winchester  however,  "  half  monk,  half 
soldier,"  as  he  was  called,  possessed  too  little  religious  in- 
fluence to  wield  a  really  spiritual  power,  and  it  was  only 
at  the  close  of  Stephen's  reign  that  the  nation  really  found 
a  moral  leader  in  Theobald,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 
Theobald's  ablest  agent  and  adviser  was  Thomas,  the  son 
of  Gilbert  Beket,  a  leading  citizen  and,  it  is  said ,  Port- 
reeve of  Loudon,  the  site  of  whose  house  is  still  marked 
by  the  Mercer's  Chapel  in  Cbeapside.  His  mother  Rohe^e 
was  a  type  of  the  devout  woman  of  her  day ;  she  weighed 
her  boy  every  year  on  his  birthday  against  money,  clothes, 
and  provisions  which  she  gave  to  the  poor.  Thomas  grew 
up  amid  the  Norman  barons  and  clerks  who  frequented 
hia  father's  house  with  a  genial  freedom  of  character 
tempered  by  the  Norman  refinement;  he  passed  from  the 
school  of  Merton  to  the  University  of  Paris,  and  returned 


Chap.  2.]       UXDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.    1071—1214  167 

to  fling  himself  into  the  life  of  the  young  nobles  of  the 
time.  Tall,  handsome,  bright-eyed,  ready  of  wit  and 
speech,  his  firmness  of  temper  showed  itself  in  his  very 
sports ;  to  rescue  his  hawk  which  had  fallen  into  the  water 
he  once  plunged  into  a  miUrace  and  was  all  but  crushed 
by  tlie  wheel.  The  loss  of  his  father's  wealth  drove  him 
to  the  court  of  Archbishop  Theobald,  and  he  soon  became 
the  Primate's  confidant  in  his  plans  for  the  rescue  of 
England. 

The  natural  influence  which  the  Primate  would  have 
exerted  was  long  held  in  suspense  by  the  superior  position 
of  Bishop  Henry  of  Winchester  as  Papal  Legate;  but 
this  oflBce  ceased  with  the  Pope  who  granted  it,  and  when 
in  1150  it  was  transferred  to  the  Archbishop  himself  The- 
obald soon  made  his  weight  felt.  The  long  disorder  of 
the  realm  was  producing  its  natural  reaction  in  exhaus- 
tion and  disgust,  as  well  as  in  a  general  craving  for  return 
to  the  line  of  hereditarv  succession  whose  breaking  seemed 
the  cause  of  the  nation's  woes.  But  the  growth  of  their 
son  Henry  to  manhood  set  naturally  aside  the  pretensions 
both  of  Count  Geoffrv  and  M^atilda.  Young  as  he  was 
Henry  already  showed  the  cool  long-sighted  temper  which 
was  to  be  his  characteristic  on  the  throne.  Foiled  in  an 
early  attempt  to  grasp  the  crown,  he  looked  quietly  on  at 
the  disorder  which  was  doing  his  work  till  the  death  of 
his  father  at  the  close  of  1151  left  him  master  of  Xormandv 
and  Anjou.  In  the  spring  of  the  following  year  his  mar- 
riage with  its  duchess,  Eleanor  of  Poitou,  added  Acqui- 
taine  to  his  dominions.  Stephen  saw  the  gathering  storm, 
and  strove  to  meet  it.  He  called  on  the  bishops  and  bar- 
onage to  secure  the  succession  of  his  son  Eustace  by  con- 
senting to  his  association  with  him  in  the  kingdom.  But 
the  moment  was  now  come  for  Theobald  to  play  his  part. 
He  was  already  negotiating  through  Thomas  of  London 
with  Henry  and  the  Pope;  he  met  Stephen's  plans  by  a 
refusal  to  swear  fealty  to  his  son,  and  the  bishops,  in  spite 
of  Stephen's  threats,  went  with  their  head.     The  blow 


168  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  IL 

m —  --' m 

was  soon  followed  by  a  harder  one,  Thomas,  as  Theo- 
bald's agent,  invited  Henry  to  appear  in  England,  and 
though  the  Duke  disappointed  his  supporters'  hopes  by  the 
scanty  number  of  men  he  brought  with  him  in  1153,  his 
weakness  proved  in  the  end  a  source  of  strength.  It  was 
not  to  foreigners,  men  said,  that  Henry  owed  his  success, 
but  to  the  arms  of  Englishmen.  An  English  army  gath- 
ered round  him,  and  as  the  hosts  of  Stephen  and  the  Duke 
drew  together  a  battle  seemed  near  which  would  decide 
the  fate  of  the  realm.  But  Theobald  who  was  now  firmly 
supported  by  the  greater  barons  again  interfered  and  forced 
the  rivals  to  an  agreement.  To  the  excited  partisans  of 
the  house  of  Anjou  it  seemed  as  if  the  nobles  were  simply 
playing  their  own  game  in  the  proposed  settlement  and 
striving  to  preserve  their  power  by  a  balance  of  masters. 
The  suspicion  was  probably  groundless,  but  all  fear  van- 
ished with  the  death  of  Eustace,  who  rode  off  from  his 
father's  camp,  maddened  with  the  ruin  of  his  hopes,  to 
die  in  August,  smitten,  as  men  believed,  by  the  hand  of 
God  for  his  plunder  of  abbeys.  The  ground  was  now 
clear,  and  in  November  the  Treaty  of  Wallingford  abol- 
ished the  evils  of  the  long  anarchy.  The  castles  were  to 
be  razed,  the  crown  lands  resumed,  the  foreign  mercena- 
ries banished  from  the  country,  and  sheriffs  appointed  to 
restore  order.  Stephen  was  recognized  as  King,  and  in 
turn  recognized  Henry  as  his  heir.  The  Duke  received  at 
Oxford  the  fealty  of  the  barons,  and  passed  into  Normandy 
in  the  spring  of  1154.  The  work  of  reformation  had 
already  begun.  Stephen  resented  indeed  the  pressure 
which  Henry  put  on  him  to  enforce  the  destruction  of  the 
castles  built  during  the  anarchy;  but  Stephen's  resistance 
was  but  the  pettish  outbreak  of  a  ruined  man.  He  was 
in  fact  fast  drawing  to  the  grave ;  and  on  his  death  in  Oc- 
tober, 1154,  Henry  returned  to  take  the  crown  without  a 
blow. 


CHAPTER  III. 

HENKY  THE   SECOND. 
1154—1189. 

Young  as  he  was,  and  he  had  reached  but  his  twenty- 
first  year  when  he  returned  to  England  as  its  King,  Henry 
mounted  the  throne  with  a  purpose  of  government  which 
his  reign  carried  steadily  out.  His  practical,  serviceable 
frame  suited  the  hardest  worker  of  his  time.  There  was 
something  in  his  build  and  look,  in  the  square  stout  form, 
the  fiery  face,  the  close-cropped  hair,  the  prominent  eyes, 
the  bull-neck,  the  coarse  strong  hands,  the  bowed  legs, 
that  marked  out  the  keen,  stirring,  coarse-fibred  man  of 
business.  "He  never  sits  down,"  said  one  who  observed 
him  closely ;  "  he  is  always  on  his  legs  from  morning  till 
night. "  Orderly  in  business,  careless  of  appearance,  spar- 
ing in  diet,  never  resting  or  giving  his  servants  rest, 
chatty,  inquisitive,  endowed  with  a  singular  charm  of  ad- 
dress and  strength  of  memory,  obstinate  in  love  or  hatred, 
a  fair  scholar,  a  great  hunter,  his  general  air  that  of  a 
rough,  passionate,  busy  man,  Henry's  personal  character 
told  directly  on  the  character  of  his  reign.  His  accession 
marks  the  period  of  amalgamation  when  neighborhood  and 
traffic  and  intermarriage  drew  Englishmen  and  Normans 
into  a  single  people.  A  national  feeling  was  thus  spring- 
ing up  before  which  the  barriers  of  the  older  feudalism 
were  to  be  swept  away.  Henry  had  even  less  reverence 
for  the  feudal  past  than  the  men  of  his  day :  he  was  in- 
deed utterly  without  the  imagination  and  reverence  which 
enable  men  to  sympathize  with  any  past  at  all.  He  had  a 
practical  man's  impatience  of  the  obstacles  thrown  in  the 
way  of  bis  reforms  by  the  older  constitution  of  the  realm, 


170  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  II. 

nor  could  he  understand  other  men's  rehictance  to  pur- 
chase undoubted  improvements  by  the  sacrifice  of  customs 
and  traditions  of  bygone  days.  Without  any  theoretical 
hostility  to  the  co-ordinate  powers  of  the  state,  it  seemed 
to  him  a  perfectly  reasonable  and  natural  course  to  tram- 
ple either  baronage  or  Church  under  foot  to  gain  his  end 
of  good  government.  He  saw  clearly  that  the  remedy  for 
such  anarchy  as  England  had  endured  under  Stephen  lay 
in  the  establishment  of  a  kingly  rule  unembarrassed  by 
any  privileges  of  order  or  class,  administered  by  royal 
servants,  and  in  whose  public  administration  the  nobles 
acted  simply  as  delegates  of  the  sovereign.  His  work  was 
to  lie  in  the  organization  of  judicial  and  administrative 
reforms  which  realized  this  idea.  But  of  the  currents  of 
thought  and  feeling  which  were  tending  in  the  same  direc- 
tion he  knew  nothing.  V^hat  he  did  for  the  moral  and 
social  impulses  which  were  telling  on  men  about  him  was 
simply  to  let  them  alone.  Beligion  grew  more  and  more 
identified  with  patriotism  under  the  eyes  of  a  King  who 
whispered,  and  scribbled,  and  looked  at  picture-books  dur- 
ing mass,  who  never  confessed,  and  cursed  God  in  wild 
frenzies  of  blasphemy.  Great  peoples  formed  themselves 
on  both  sides  of  the  sea  round  a  sovereign  who  bent  the 
whole  force  of  his  mind  to  hold  together  an  Empire  which 
the  growth  of  nationality  must  inevitably  destroy.  There 
is  throughout  a  tragic  grandeur  in  the  irony  of  Henry's 
position,  that  of  a  Sforza  of  the  fifteenth  century  set  in  the 
midst  of  the  twelfth,  building  up  by  patience  and  policy 
and  craft  a  dominion  alien  to  the  deepest  sympathies  of 
his  age  and  fated  to  be  swept  away  in  the  end  by  popular 
forces  to  whose  existence  his  very  cleverness  and  activity 
blinded  him.  But  whether  by  the  anti-national  temper 
of  his  general  system  or  by  the  administrative  reforms  of 
his  English  rule  his  policy  did  more  than  that  of  all  his 
predecessors  to  prepare  England  for  the  unity  and  freedom 
which  the  fall  of  his  house  was  to  reveal. 

He  had  been  placed  on  the  throne,  as  we  have  seen,  by 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1314.  171 

the  Church.  His  first  work  was  to  repair  the  evils  which 
England  had  endured  till  his  accession  by  the  restoration 
of  the  system  of  Henry  the  First ;  and  it  was  with  the  aid 
and  counsel  of  Theobald  that  the  foreign  marauders  were 
driven  from  the  realm,  the  new  castles  demolished  in  spite 
of  the  opposition  of  the  baronage,  the  King's  Court  and 
Exchequer  restored.  Age  and  infirmity,  however,  warned 
the  Primate  to  retire  from  the  post  of  minister,  and  his 
power  fell  into  the  younger  and  more  vigorous  hands  of 
Thomas  Beket,  who  had  long  acted  as  his  confidential  ad- 
viser and  was  now  made  Chancellor.  Thomas  won  the 
personal  favor  of  the  King.  The  two  young  men  had,  in 
Theobald's  words,  "but  one  heart  and  mind;"  Henry 
jested  in  the  Chancellor's  hall,  or  tore  his  cloak  from  his 
shoulders  in  rough  horse-play  as  they  rode  through  the 
streets.  He  loaded  his  favorite  with  riches  and  honors, 
but  there  is  no  ground  for  thinking  that  Thomas  in  any 
degree  influenced  his  system  of  rule.  Henry's  policy 
seems  for  good  or  evil  to  have  been  throughout  his  own. 
His  work  of  reorganization  went  steadily  on  amid  trou- 
bles at  home  and  abroad.  Welsh  outbreaks  forced  him  in 
1157  to  lead  an  army  over  the  border;  and  a  crushing  re- 
pulse showed  that  he  was  less  skilful  as  a  general  than  as 
a  statesman.  The  next  year  saw  him  drawn  across  the 
Channel,  where  he  was  already  master  of  a  third  of  the 
present  France.  Anjou  and  Touraine  he  had  inherited 
from  his  father,  Maine  and  Normandy  from  his  mother, 
he  governed  Brittany  through  his  brother,  while  the  seven 
provinces  of  the  South,  Poitou,  Saintonge,  Auvergne, 
Perigord,  the  Limousin,  the  Angoumois,  and  Guienne, 
belonged  to  his  wife.  As  Duchess  of  Aquitaine  Eleanor 
had  claims  on  Toulouse,  and  these  Henry  prepared  in  1159 
to  enforce  by  arms.  But  the  campaign  was  turned  to  the 
profit  of  his  reforms.  He  had  already  begun  the  work  of 
bringing  the  baronage  within  the  grasp  of  the  law  by 
sending  judges  from  the  Exchequer  year  after  year  to  ex- 
act the  royal  dues  and  administer  the  King's  justice  even 


172  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  IL 


in  castle  and  manor.  He  now  attacked  its  military  influ- 
ence. Each  man  who  held  lands  of  a  certain  value  was 
bound  to  furnish  a  knight  for  his  lord's  service;  and  the 
barons  thus  held  a  body  of  trained  soldiers  at  their  dispo- 
sal. When  Henry  called  his  chief  lords  to  serve  in  the 
war  of  Toulouse,  he  allowed  the  lower  tenants  to  commute 
their  service  for  sums  payable  to  the  royal  treasury  under 
the  name  of  "scutage,"  or  shield-money.  The  "Great 
Scutage"  did  much  to  disarm  the  baronage,  while  it  ena- 
bled the  King  to  hire  foreign  mercenaries  for  his  service 
abroad.  Again,  however,  he  was  luckless  in  war.  King 
Lewis  of  France  threw  himself  into  Toulouse.  Conscious 
of  the  ill-compacted  nature  of  his  wide  dominion,  Henry 
shrank  from  an  open  contest  with  his  suzerain ;  he  with- 
drew his  forces,  and  the  quarrel  ended  in  1160  by  a  formal 
alliance  and  the  betrothal  of  his  eldest  son  to  the  daughter 
of  Lewis. 

Henry  returned  to  his  English  realm  to  regulate  the  re- 
lations of  the  state  with  the  Church.  These  rested  in  the 
main  on  the  system  established  by  the  Conqueror,  and 
with  that  system  Henry  had  no  wish  to  meddle.  But  he 
was  resolute  that,  baron  or  priest,  all  should  be  equal  be- 
fore the  law ;  and  he  had  no  more  mercy  for  clerical  than 
for  feudal  immunities.  The  immunities  of  the  clergy  in- 
deed were  becoming  a  hindrance  to  public  justice.  The 
clerical  order  in  the  middle  ages  extended  far  beyond  the 
priesthood;  it  included  in  Henry's  day  the  whole  of  the 
professional  and  educated  classes.  It  was  subject  to  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Church  courts  alone;  but  bodily  pun- 
ishment could  only  be  inflicted  by  officers  of  the  lay  courts, 
and  so  great  had  the  jealousy  between  clergy  and  laity  be- 
come that  the  bishops  no  longer  sought  civil  aid  but  re- 
stricted themselves  to  the  purely  spiritual  punishments  of 
penance  and  deprivation  of  orders.  Such  penalties  formed 
no  effectual  check  upon  crime,  and  while  preserving  the 
Church  courts  the  King  aimed  at  the  delivery  of  convicted 
offenders  to  secular  punishment.     For  the  carrying  out  of 


Chap.  8.]       UNDEE  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  173 


these  designs  he  sought  an  agent  in  Thomas  the  Chancel- 
lor. Thomas  had  now  been  his  minister  for  eight  years, 
and  had  fought  bravely  in  the  war  against  Toulouse  at  the 
head  of  the  seven  hundred  knights  who  formed  his  house- 
hold. But  the  King  had  other  work  for  him  than  war. 
On  Theobald's  death  in  1162  he  forced  on  the  monks  of 
Canterbury  his  election  as  Archbishop.  But  from  the 
momeat  of  his  appointment  the  dramatic  temper  of  the 
new  Primate  flung  its  whole  energy  into  the  part  he  set 
himself  to  play.  At  the  first  intimation  of  Henry's  pur- 
pose he  pointed  with  a  laugh  to  his  gay  court  attire :  "  You 
are  choosing  a  fine  dress,"  he  said,  "to  figure  at  the  head 
of  your  Canterbury  monks ;"  once  monk  and  Archbishop 
he  passed  with  a  fevered  earnestness  from  luxury  to  as- 
ceticism; and  a  visit  to  the  Council  of  Tours  in  1163, 
where  the  highest  doctrines  of  ecclesiastical  authority  were 
sanctioned  by  Pope  Alexander  the  Third,  strengthened  his 
purpose  of  struggling  for  the  privileges  of  the  Church. 
His  change  of  attitude  encouraged  his  old  rivals  at  court 
to  vex  him  with  petty  law-suits,  but  no  breach  had  come 
with  the  King  till  Henry  proposed  that  clerical  convicts 
should  be  punished  by  the  civil  power.  Thomas  refused ; 
he  would  only  consent  that  a  clerk,  once  degraded,  should 
for  after  offences  suffer  like  a  layman.  Both  parties  ap- 
pealed to  the  "  customs"  of  the  realm ;  and  it  was  to  state 
these  "  customs"  that  a  court  was  held  in  1164  at  Claren- 
don near  Marlborough. 

The  report  presented  by  bishops  and  barons  formed  the 
Constitutions  of  Clarendon,  a  code  which  in  the  bulk  of 
its  provisions  simply  re-enacted  the  system  of  the  Con- 
queror. Every  election  of  bishop  or  abbot  was  to  take 
place  before  royal  ofiicers,  in  the  King's  chapel,  and  with 
the  King's  assent.  The  prelate  elect  was  bound  to  do 
homage  to  the  King  for  his  lands  before  consecration,  and 
to  hold  his  lands  as  a  barony  from  the  King,  subject  to  all 
feudal  burdens  of  taxation  and  attendance  in  the  King's 
court.     No  bishop  might  leave  the  realm  without  the  royal 


174  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 


permission.     No  tenant  in  chief  or  royal  servant  might  be 
excommunicated,  or  their  land  placed  under  interdict,  but 
by  the  King's  assent.     What  was  new  was  the  legislation 
respecting  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction.     The  King's  court 
was  to  decide  whether  a  suit  between  clerk  and  layman, 
whose  nature  was  disputed,  belonged  to  the  Church  courts 
or  the  King's.     A  royal  oflScer  was  to  be  present  at  all 
ecclesiastical  proceedings  in  order  to  confine  the  Bishop's 
court  within  its  own  due  limits,  and  a  clerk  convicted 
there  passed  at  once  under  the  civil  jurisdiction.     An  ap- 
peal was  left  from  the  Archbishop's  court  to  the  King's 
court  for  defect  of  justice,  but  none  might  appeal  to  the 
Papal  court  save  with  the  King's  leave.     The  privilege  of 
sanctuary  in  churches  and  churchyards  was  repealed,  so 
far  as  property  and  not  persons  was  concerned.     After  a 
passionate  refusal  the  Primate  was  at  last  brought  to  set 
his  seal  to  these  Constitutions,  but  his  assent  was  soon  re- 
tracted, and  Henry's  savage  resentment  threw  the  moral 
advantage  of  the  position  into  his  opponent's  hands.    Vexa- 
tious charges  were  brought  against  Thomas,  and  he  was 
summoned  to  answer  at  a  Council  held  in  the  autumn  at 
Northampton.     All  urged  him  to  submit;    his  very  life 
was  said  to  be  in  peril  from  the  King's  wrath.     But  in 
the  presence  of  danger  the  courage  of  the  man  rose  to  its 
full  height.     Grasping  his  archiepiscopal  cross  he  entered 
the  royal  court,  forbade  the  nobles  to  condemn  him,  and 
appealed  in  the  teeth  of  the  Constitutions  to  the  Papal  See. 
Shouts  of  "  Traitor !"  followed  him  as  he  withdrew.     The 
Primate  turned  fiercely  at  the  word:  "Were  I  a  knight," 
he   shouted   back,   "my  sword  should  answer  that   foul 
taunt !"    Once  alone,  however,  dread  pressed  more  heavily ; 
he  fled  in  disguise  at  nightfall  and  reached  France  through 
Flanders. 

Great  as  were  the  dangers  it  was  to  bring  with  it,  the 
flight  of  Thomas  left  Henry  free  to  carry  on  the  reforms 
be  had  planned.  In  spite  of  denunciations  from  Primate 
and  Pope,  the  Constitutions  regulated  from  this  time  the 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  It5 

relations  of  the  Church  with  the  State.     Henry  now  turned 
to  the  actual  organization  of  the  realm.     His  reign,  it  has 
been  truly  said,   "initiated  the  rule  of  law"  as  distinct 
from   the   despotism,   whether  personal   or  tempered   by 
routine,  of  the  Norman  sovereigns.     It  was  by  successive 
"  assizes"  or  codes  issued  with  the  sanction  of  the  great 
councils  of  barons  and  prelates  which  he  summoned  year 
by  year,  that  he  perfected  in  a  system  of  gradual  reforms 
the  administrative  measures  which  Henry  the  First  had 
begun.     The  fabric  of  our  judicial  legislation  commences 
in  1166  with  the  Assize  of  Clarendon,  the  first  object  of 
which  was  to  provide  for  the  order  of  the  realm  by  reviv- 
ing the  old  English  system  of  mutual  security  or  frank 
pledge.     No  stranger  might  abide  in  any  place  save  a 
borough  and  only  there  for  a  single  night  unless  sureties 
were  given  for  his  good  behavior;   and  the  list  of  such 
strangers  was  to  be  submitted  to  the  itinerant  justices. 
In  the  provisions  of  this  assize  for  the  repression  of  crime 
we  find  the  origin  of  trial  by  jury,  so  often  attributed  to 
earlier  times.     Twelve  lawful  men  of  each  hundred,  with 
four  from  each  township,  were  sworn  to  present  those  who 
were  known  or  reputed  as  criminals  within  their  district 
for  trial  by  ordeal.     The  jurors  were  thus  not  merely  wit- 
nesses, but  sworn  to  act  as  judges  also  in  determining  the 
value  of  the  charge,  and  it  is  this  double  character  of 
Henry's  jurors  that  has  descended  to  our  "grand  jury," 
who  still   remain  charged  with  the  duty  of   presenting 
criminals  for   trial   after   examination   of    the  witnesses 
against  them.     Two  later  steps  brought  the  jury  to  its 
modern   condition.     Under  Edward  the  First   witnesses 
acquainted  with  the  particular  fact  in  question  were  added 
in  each  case  to  the  general  jury,  and  by  the  separation  of 
these  two  classes  of  jurors  at  a  later  time  the  last  became 
simply  "  witnesses"  without  any  judicial  power,  while  the 
first  ceased  to  be  witnesses  at  all  and  became  our  modern 
jurors,  who  are  only  judges  of  the  testimony  given.     With 
this  assize  too  a  practice  which  had  prevailed  from  the 


176  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  II. 

earliest  English  times,  the  practice  of  "compurgation," 
passed  away.  Under  this  system  the  accused  could  be 
acquitted  of  the  charge  by  the  voluntary  oath  of  his  neigh- 
bors and  kinsmen ;  but  this  was  abolished  by  the  Assize 
of  Clarendon,  and  for  the  fifty  years  which  followed  it  his 
trial,  after  the  investigation  of  the  grand  jury,  was  found 
solely  in  the  ordeal  or  "judgment  of  God,"  where  inno- 
cence was  proved  by  the  power  of  holding  hot  iron  in  the 
hand  or  by  sinking  when  flung  into  the  water,  for  swim- 
ming was  a  proof  of  guilt.  It  was  the  abolition  of  the 
whole  system  of  ordeal  by  the  Council  of  Lateran  in  1216 
which  led  the  way  to  the  establishment  of  what  is  called 
a  "  petty  jury"  for  the  final  trial  of  prisoners. 

But  Henry's  work  of  reorganization  had  hardly  begun 
when  it  was  broken  by  the  pressure  of  the  strife  with  the 
Primate.  For  six  years  the  contest  raged  bitterly;  at 
Rome,  at  Paris,  the  agents  of  the  two  powers  intrigued 
against  each  other.  Henry  stooped  to  acts  of  the  meanest 
persecution  in  driving  the  Primate's  kinsmen  from  Eng- 
land, and  in  confiscating  the  lands  of  their  order  till  the 
monks  of  Pontigny  should  refuse  Thomas  a  home;  while 
Beket  himself  exhausted  the  patience  of  his  friends  bj^  his 
violence  and  excommunications,  as  well  as  by  the  stub- 
bornness with  which  he  clung  to  the  offensive  clause  "  Sav- 
ing the  honor  of  my  order, "  the  addition  of  which  to  his 
consent  would  have  practically  neutralized  the  King's  re- 
forms. The  Pope  counselled  mildness,  the  French  king 
for  a  time  withdrew  his  support,  his  own  clerks  gave  way 
at  last.  "Come  up,"  said  one  of  them  bitterly  when  his 
horse  stumbled  on  the  road,  "saving  the  honor  of  the 
Church  and  my  order."  But  neither  warning  nor  deser- 
tion moved  the  resolution  of  the  Primate.  Henry,  in 
dread  of  Papal  excommunication,  resolved  in  1170  on  the 
coronation  of  his  son :  and  this  office,  which  belonged  to 
the  see  of  Canterbury,  he  transferred  to  the  Archbishop  of 
York.  But  the  Pope's  hands  were  now  freed  by  his  suc- 
cesses in  Italy,  and  the  threat  of  an  interdict  forced  the 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  177 


King  to  a  show  of  submission.  The  Archbishop  was  al- 
lowed to  return  after  a  reconciliation  with  the  King  at 
Freteval,  and  the  Kentishmen  flocked  around  him  with 
uproarious  welcome  as  he  entered  Canterbury.  "  This  is 
England,"  said  his  clerks,  as  they  saw  the  white  head- 
lands t)f  the  coast,  "You  will  wish  yourself  elsewhere 
before  fifty  days  are  gone,"  said  Thomas  sadly,  and  his 
foreboding  showed  his  appreciation  of  Henry's  character. 
He  was  now  in  the  royal  power,  and  orders  had  already 
been  issued  in  the  younger  Henry's  name  for  his  arrest 
when  four  knights  from  the  King's  court,  spurred  to  out- 
rage by  a  passionate  outburst  of  their  master's  wrath, 
crossed  the  sea,  and  on  the  29th  of  December  forced  their 
way  into  the  Archbishop's  palace.  After  a  stormy  parley 
with  him  in  his  chamber  they  withdrew  to  arm.  Thomas 
was  hurried  by  his  clerks  into  the  cathedral,  but  as  he 
reached  the  steps  leading  from  the  transept  to  the  choir  his 
pursuers  burst  in  from  the  cloisters.  "Where,"  cried 
Reginald  Fitzurse  in  the  dusk  of  the  dimly  lighted  min- 
ster, "  where  is  the  traitor,  Thomas  Beket?"  The  Primate 
turned  resolutely  back :  "  Here  I  am,  no  traitor,  but  a 
priest  of  God,"  he  replied,  and  again  descending  the  steps 
be  placed  himself  with  his  back  against  a  pillar  and  fronted 
his  foes.  All  the  bravery  and  violence  of  his  old  knightly 
life  seemed  to  revive  in  Thomas  as  he  tossed  back  the 
threats  and  demands  of  his  assailants.  "You  are  our 
prisoner,"  shouted  Fitzurse,  and  the  four  knights  seized 
him  to  drag  him  from  the  church.  "  Do  not  touch  me, 
Reginald,"  cried  the  Primate,  "pander  that  you  are,  you 
owe  me  fealty;"  and  availing  himself  of  his  personal 
strength  he  shook  him  roughly  off.  "Strike,  strike,"  re- 
torted Fitzurse,  and  blow  after  blow  struck  Thomas  to  the 
ground.  A  retainer  of  Ranulf  de  Broc  with  the  point  of 
his  sword  scattered  the  Primate's  brains  on  the  ground. 
"  Let  us  be  off, "  he  cried  triumphantly,  "  this  traitor  will 
never  rise  again." 

The  brutal  murder  was  received  with  a  thriU  of  horror 
Vol.  L— 12 


178  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

throughout  Christendom;  miracles  were  wrought  at  the 
martyr's  tomb ;  he  was  canonized,  and  became  the  most 
popular  of  English  saints.  The  stately  "mart3^rdom" 
which  rose  over  his  relics  at  Canterbury  seemed  to  embody 
the  triumph  which  his  blood  had  won.  But  the  contest 
had  in  fact  revealed  a  new  current  of  educated  opinion 
which  was  to  be  more  fatal  to  the  Church  than  the  reforms 
of  the  King.  Throughout  it  Henry  had  been  aided  by  a 
silent  revolution  which  now  began  to  part  the  purely  lit- 
erary class  from  the  purely  clerical.  During  the  earlier 
ages  of  our  history  we  have  seen  literature  springing  up 
in  ecclesiastical  schools,  and  protecting  itself  against  the 
ignorance  and  violence  of  the  time  under  ecclesiastical 
privileges.  Almost  all  our  writers  from  Baeda  to  the  days 
of  the  Angevins  are  clergy  or  monks.  The  revival  of  let- 
ters which  followed  the  Conquest  was  a  purely  ecclesiasti- 
cal revival ;  the  intellectual  impulse  which  Bee  had  given 
to  Normandy  travelled  across  the  Channel  with  the  new 
Norman  abbots  who  were  established  in  the  greater  Eng- 
lish monasteries;  and  writing-rooms  or  scriptoria,  where 
the  chief  works  of  Latin  literature,  patristic  or  classical, 
were  copied  and  illuminated,  the  lives  of  saints  compiled, 
and  entries  noted  in  the  monastic  chronicle,  formed  from 
this  time  a  part  of  every  religious  house  of  any  importance. 
But  the  literature  which  found  this  religious  shelter  was 
not  so  much  ecclesiastical  as  secular.  Even  the  philo- 
sophical and  devotional  impulse  given  by  Anselm  produced 
no  English  work  of  theology  or  metaphysics.  The  literary 
revival  which  followed  the  Conquest  took  mainly  the  old 
historical  form.  At  Durham  Turgot  and  Simeon  threw 
into  Latin  shape  the  national  annals  to  the  time  of  Henry 
the  First  with  an  especial  regard  to  northern  affairs,  while 
the  earlier  events  of  Stephen's  reign  were  noted  down  by 
two  Priors  of  Hexham  in  the  wild  border-land  between 
England  and  the  Scots. 

These  however  were  the  colorless  jottings  of  mere  annal- 
ists; it  was  in  the  Scriptorium  of  Canterbury,  in  Qsbern's 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  179 


lives  of  the  English  saints  or  in  Eadmer's  record  of  the 
struggle  of  Anselm  against  the  Red  King  and  his  successor 
that  we  see  the  first  indications  of  a  distinctlj^  English 
feeling  telling  on  the  new  literature.  The  national  im- 
pulse is  yet  more  conspicuous  in  the  two  historians  that 
followed.  The  war-songs  of  the  English  conquerors  of 
Britain  were  preserved  by  Henry,  an  Archdeacon  of 
Huntingdon,  who  wove  them  into  annals  compiled  from 
Bffida  and  the  Chronicle ;  while  William,  the  librarian  of 
Malmesburj.  as  industriously  collected  the  lighter  ballads 
which  embodied  the  popular  traditions  of  the  English 
Kings.  It  is  in  William  above  all  others  that  we  see  the 
new  tendency  of  English  literature.  In  himself,  as  in  his 
work,  he  marks  the  fusion  of  the  conquerors  and  the  con- 
quered, for  he  was  of  both  English  and  Norman  parentage 
and  his  sympathies  were  as  divided  as  his  blood.  The 
form  and  style  of  his  writings  show  the  influence  of  those 
classical  studies  which  were  now  reviving  throughout 
Christendom.  Monk  as  he  is,  William  discards  the  older 
ecclesiastical  models  and  the  annalistic  form.  Events  are 
grouped  together  with  no  strict  reference  to  time,  while 
the  lively  narrative  flows  rapidly  and  loosely  along  with 
constant  breaks  of  digression  over  the  general  history  of 
Europe  and  the  Church.  It  is  in  this  change  of  historic 
spirit  that  William  takes  his  place  as  first  of  the  more 
statesmanlike  and  philosophic  school  of  historians  who 
began  to  arise  in  direct  connection  with  the  Court,  and 
among  whom  the  author  of  the  chronicle  which  commonly 
bears  the  name  of  "  Benedict  of  Petersborough"  with  his 
continuator  Roger  of  Howden  are  the  most  conspicuous. 
Both  held  judicial  offices  under  Henry  the  Second,  and  it 
is  to  their  position  at  Court  that  they  owe  the  fulness  and 
accuracy  of  their  information  as  to  affairs  at  home  and 
abroad,  as  well  as  their  copious  supply  of  official  docu- 
ments. What  is  noteworthy  in  these  writers  is  the  purely 
political  temper  with  which  they  regard  the  conflict  of 
Church  and  State  in  their  time.     But  the  English  court 


180  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II, 

had  now  become  the  centre  of  a  distinctly  secular  litera- 
ture The  treatise  of  Ranulf  de  Glanvill,  a  justiciar  of 
Henr}'  the  Second,  is  the  earliest  work  on  English  law,  as 
that  of  the  royal  treasurer,  Richard  Fitz-Neal,  on  the  Ex- 
chequer is  the  earliest  on  English  government. 

Still  more  distinctly  secular  than  these,  though  the  work 
of  a  priest  who  claimed  to  be  a  bishop,  are  the  writings  of 
Gerald  de  Barri.  Gerald  is  the  father  of  our  popular  lit- 
erature as  he  is  the  originator  of  the  political  and  ecclesi- 
astical pamphlet.  Welsh  blood  (as  his  usual  name  of 
Giraldus  Cambrensis  implies)  mixed  with  Norman  in  his 
veins,  and  something  of  the  restless  Celtic  fire  runs  alike 
through  his  writings  and  his  life.  A  busy  scholar  at 
Paris,  a  reforming  Archdeacon  in  Wales,  the  wittiest  of 
Court  chaplains,  the  most  troublesome  of  bishops,  Gerald 
became  the  gayest  and  most  amusing  of  all  the  authors  of 
his  time.  In  his  hands  the  stately  Latin  tongue  took  the 
vivacity  and  picturesqueness  of  the  jongleur's  verse. 
Reared  as  he  had  been  in  classic  studies,  he  threw  pedan- 
try contemptuously  aside.  "  It  is  better  to  be  dumb  than 
not  to  be  understood,"  is  his  characteristic  apology  for  the 
novelty  of  his  style:  "new  times  require  new  fashions, 
and  so  I  have  thrown  utterly  aside  the  '>ld  and  dry  method 
of  some  authors  and  aimed  at  adopting  the  fashion  of 
speech  which  is  actually  in  vogue  to-day."  His  tract  on 
the  conquest  of  Ireland  and  his  account  of  Wales,  which 
are  in  fact  reports  of  two  journeys  undertaken  in  those 
countries  with  John  and  Archbishop  Baldwin,  illustrate 
his  rapid  faculty  of  careless  observation,  his  audacity,  and 
his  good  sense.  They  are  just  the  sort  of  lively,  dashing 
letters  that  we  find  in  the  correspondence  of  a  modern  jour- 
nal. There  is  the  same  modern  tone  in  his  political  pam- 
phlets; his  profusion  of  jests,  his  fund  of  anecdote,  the 
aptness  of  his  quotations,  his  natural  shrewdness  and  criti- 
cal acumen,  the  clearness  and  vivacity  of  his  style,  are 
backed  by  a  fearlessness  and  impetuosity  that  made  him 
a  dangerous  assailant  even  to  such  a  ruler  as  Henry  the 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  181 

Second.  The  invectives  in  which  Gerald  poured  out  his 
resentment  against  the  Angevins  are  the  cause  of  half  the 
scandal  about  Henry  and  his  sons  which  has  found  its 
way  into  history.  His  life  was  wasted  in  an  ineffectual 
attempt  to  secure  the  see  of  St.  David's,  but  his  pungent 
pen  plaj'ed  its  part  in  rousing  the  nation  to  its  later  strug- 
gle with  the  Crown. 

A  tone  of  distinct  hostility  to  the  Church  developed 
itself  almost  from  the  first  among  the  singers  of  romance. 
Romance  had  long  before  taken  root  in  the  court  of  Henry 
the  First,  where  under  the  patronage  of  Queen  Maud  the 
dreams  of  Arthur,  so  long  cherished  by  the  Celts  of  Brit- 
tany, and  which  had  travelled  to  Wales  in  the  train  of 
the  exile  Rhys  ap  Tewdor,  took  shape  in  the  History  of 
the  Britons  by  Geoffry  of  Monmouth.  Myth,  legend, 
tradition,  the  classical  pedantrj^  of  the  day,  Welsh  hopes 
of  future  triumph  over  the  Saxon,  the  memories  of  the 
Crusades  and  of  the  world-wide  dominion  of  Charles  the 
Great,  were  mingled  together  by  this  daring  fabulist  in  a 
work  whose  popularity  became  at  once  immense.  Alfred 
of  Beverly  transferred  Geoffry's  inventions  into  the  region 
of  sober  history,  while  two  Norman  trouveurs,  Gaimar 
and  Wace,  translated  them  into  French  verse.  So  com- 
plete was  the  credence  they  obtained  that  Arthur's  tomb 
at  Glastonbury  was  visited  by  Henrj^  the  Second,  while  the 
child  of  his  son  Geoffry  and  of  Constance  of  Brittany  re- 
ceived the  name  of  the  Celtic  hero.  Out  of  Geoffry's 
creation  grew  little  by  little  the  poem  of  the  Table  Round. 
Brittany,  which  had  mingled  with  the  story  of  Arthur 
the  older  and  more  mysterious  legend  of  the  Enchanter 
Merlin,  lent  that  of  Lancelot  to  the  wandering  minstrels  of 
the  day,  who  moulded  it  as  they  wandered  from  hall  to 
hall  into  the  familiar  tale  of  knighthood  wrested  from  its 
loyalty  by  the  love  of  woman.  The  stories  of  Tristram 
and  Gawayne,  at  first  as  independent  as  that  of  Lancelot, 
were  drawn  with  it  into  the  whirlpool  of  Arthurian  ro- 
mance j  and  when  the  Church,  jealous  of  the  popularity 


182  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

of  the  legends  of  chivalry,  invented  as  a  counteracting  in- 
fluence the  poem  of  the  Sacred  Dish,  the  San  Graal  which 
held  the  blood  of  the  Cross  invisible  to  all  eyes  but  those 
of  the  pure  in  heart,  the  genius  of  a  Court  poet,  Walter 
de  Map,  wove  the  rival  legends  together,  sent  Arthur  and 
his  knights  wandering  over  sea  and  land  in  quest  of  the 
San  Graal,  and  crowned  the  work  by  the  figure  of  Sir 
Galahad,  the  type  of  ideal  knighthood,  without  fear  and 
without  reproach. 

Walter  stands  before  us  as  the  representative  of  a  sudden 
outburst  of  literary,  social,  and  religious  criticism  which  fol- 
lowed this  growth  of  Romance  and  the  appearance  of  a  freer 
historical  tone  in  the  court  of  the  two  Henries.  Born  on 
the  Welsh  border,  a  student  at  Paris,  a  favorite  with  the 
King,  a  royal  chaplain,  justiciary,  and  ambassador,  his 
genius  was  as  various  as  it  was  prolific.  He  is  as  much 
at  his  ease  in  sweeping  together  the  chit-chat  of  the  time 
in  his  "  Courtly  Trifles"  as  in  creating  the  character  of  Sir 
Galahad.  But  he  only  rose  to  his  fullest  strength  when 
he  turned  from  the  fields  of  romance  to  that  of  Church  re- 
form and  embodied  the  ecclesiastical  abuses  of  his  day  in 
the  figure  of  his  "Bishop  Goliath."  The  whole  spirit  of 
Henry  and  his  Court  in  their  struggle  with  Thomas  is  re- 
flected and  illustrated  in  the  apocalypse  and  confession  of 
this  imaginary  prelate.  Picture  after  picture  strips  the 
evil  from  the  corruption  of  the  mediaeval  Church,  its  in- 
dolence, its  thirst  for  gain,  its  secret  immorality.  The 
whole  body  of  the  clergy  from  Pope  to  hedge-priest  is 
painted  as  busy  in  the  chase  for  gain ;  what  escapes  the 
bishop  is  snapped  up  by  the  archdeacon,  what  escapes  the 
archdeacon  is  nosed  and  hunted  down  by  the  dean,  while 
a  host  of  minor  officials  prowl  hungrily  around  these 
greater  marauders.  Out  of  the  crowd  of  figures  which 
fills  the  canvas  of  the  satirist,  pluralist  vicars,  abbots 
"purple  as  their  wines,"  monks  feeding  and  chattering 
together  like  parrots  in  the  refectory,  rises  the  Philistine 
Bishop,  light  of  purpose,  void  of  conscience,  lost  in  sensu- 


Obap.  8.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1314.  183 

ality,  drunken,  unchaste,  the  Goliath  who  sums  up  the 
enormities  of  all,  and  against  whose  forehead  this  new 
David  slings  his  sharp  pebble  of  the  brook. 

It  would  be  in  the  highest  degree  unjust  to  treat  such 
invectives  as  sober  history,  or  to  judge  the  Church  of  the 
twelfth  century  by  the  taunts  of  Walter  de  Map.  What 
writings  such  as  his  bring  home  to  us  is  the  upgrowth  of 
a  new  literary  class,  not  only  standing  apart  from  the 
Church  but  regarding  it  with  a  hardly  disguised  ill-will, 
and  breaking  down  the  unquestioning  reverence  with 
which  men  had  till  now  regarded  it  by  their  sarcasm  and 
abuse.  The  tone  of  intellectual  contempt  which  begins 
with  Walter  de  Map  goes  deepening  on  till  it  culminates 
in  Chaucer  and  passes  into  the  open  revolt  of  the  Lollard. 
But  even  in  these  early  days  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  it 
gave  Henry  strength  in  his  contest  with  the  Church.  So 
little  indeed  did  he  suffer  from  the  murder  of  Archbishop 
Thomas  that  the  years  which  follow  it  form  the  grandest 
portion  of  his  reign.  While  Rome  was  threatening  ex- 
communication he  added  a  new  realm  to  his  dominions. 
Ireland  had  long  since  fallen  from  the  civilization  and 
learning  which  its  missionaries  brought  in  the  seventh 
century  to  the  shores  of  Northumbria.  Every  element  of 
improvement  or  progress  which  had  been  introduced  into 
the  island  disappeared  in  the  long  and  desperate  struggle 
with  the  Danes.  The  coast-towns  which  the  invaders 
founded,  such  as  Dublin  or  Waterford,  remained  Danish 
in  blood  and  manners  and  at  feud  with  the  Celtic  tribes 
around  them,  though  sometimes  forced  by  the  fortunes  of 
war  to  pay  tribute  and  to  accept  the  over-lordship  of  the 
Irish  Kings.  It  was  through  these  towns,  however,  that 
the  intercourse  with  England  which  had  ceased  since  the 
eighth  century  was  to  some  extent  renewed  in  the  eleventh. 
Cut  off  from  the  Church  of  the  island  by  national  antipa- 
thy, the  Danish  coast-cities  applied  to  the  See  of  Canter- 
bury for  the  ordination  of  their  bishops,  and  acknowledged 
a  right  of  spiritual  supervision  in  Lanfranc  and  Anselm. 


184  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

The  relations  thus  formed  were  drawn  closer  by  a  slave- 
trade  between  the  two  countries  which  the  Conqueror  and 
Bishop  Wulfstan  succeeded  for  a  time  in  suppressing  at 
Bristol  but  which  appears  to  have  quickly  revived.  At 
the  time  of  Henry  the  Second's  accession  Ireland  was  full 
of  Englishmen  who  had  been  kidnapped  and  sold  into 
slavery  in  spite  of  royal  prohibitions  and  the  spiritual 
menaces  of  the  English  Church.  The  slave-trade  afforded 
a  legitimate  pretext  for  war,  had  a  pretext  been  needed  by 
the  ambition  of  Henry  the  Second;  and  within  a  few 
months  of  that  King's  coronation  John  of  Salisbury  was 
dispatched  to  obtain  the  Papal  sanction  for  an  invasion  of 
the  island.  The  enterprise,  as  it  was  laid  before  Pope 
Hadrian  IV.,  took  the  color  of  a  crusade.  The  isolation 
of  Ireland  from  the  general  body  of  Christendom,  the  ab- 
sence of  learning  and  civilization,  the  scandalous  vices  of 
its  people,  were  alleged  as  the  grounds  of  Henry's  action. 
It  was  the  general  belief  of  the  time  that  all  islands  fell 
under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Papal  See,  and  it  was  as  a 
possession  of  the  Roman  Church  that  Henry  sought  Ha- 
drian's permission  to  enter  Ireland.  His  aim  was  "  to  en- 
large the  bounds  of  the  Church,  to  restrain  the  progress 
of  vices,  to  correct  the  manners  of  its  people  and  to  plant 
virtue  among  them,  and  to  increase  the  Christian  religion." 
He  engaged  to  "subject  the  people  to  laws,  to  extirpate 
vicious  customs,  to  respect  the  rights  of  the  native 
Churches,  and  to  enforce  the  payment  of  Peter's  pence" 
as  a  recognition  of  the  overlordship  of  the  Roman  See. 
Hadrian  by  his  bull  approved  the  enterprise  as  one 
prompted  by  "the  ardor  of  faith  and  love  of  religion,"  and 
declared  his  will  that  the  people  of  Ireland  should  receive 
Henry  with  all  honor,  and  revere  him  as  their  lord. 

The  Papal  bull  was  produced  in  a  great  council  of  the 
English  baronage,  but  the  opposition  was  strong  enough 
to  force  on  Henry  a  temporary  abandonment  of  his  de- 
signs, and  fourteen  years  passed  before  the  scheme  was 
brought  to  life  again  by  the  flight  of  Dermod,  King  of 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  185 


Leinster,  to  Henry's  court.  Dermod  had  been  driven  from 
his  dominions  in  one  of  the  endless  civil  wars  which  dev- 
astated the  island ;  he  now  did  homage  for  his  kingdom 
to  Henry,  and  returned  to  Ireland  with  promises  of  aid 
from  the  English  knighthood.  He  was  followed  in  1169 
by  Robert  Fitz-Stephen,  a  son  of  the  Constable  of  Cardigan, 
with  a  little  band  of  a  hundred  and  forty  knights,  sixty 
men-at-arms,  and  three  or  four  hundred  Welsh  archers. 
Small  as  was  the  number  of  the  adventurers,  their  horses 
and  arms  proved  irresistible  by  the  Irish  kernes ;  a  sally 
of  the  men  of  Wexford  was  avenged  by  the  storm  of  their 
town;  the  Ossory  clans  were  defeated  with  a  terrible 
slaughter,  and  Dermod,  seizing  a  head  from  the  heap  of 
trophies  which  his  men  piled  at  his  feet,  tore  off  in  savage 
triumph  its  nose  and  lips  with  his  teeth.  The  arrival  of 
fresh  forces  heralded  the  coming  of  Richard  of  Clare,  Earl 
of  Pembroke  and  Striguil,  a  ruined  baron  who  bore  the 
nickname  of  Strongbow,  and  who  in  defiance  of  Henry's 
prohibition  landed  near  Waterford  with  a  force  of  fifteen 
hundred  men  as  Dermod's  mercenary.  The  city  was  at 
once  stormed,  and  the  united  forces  of  the  Earl  and  King 
marched  to  the  siege  of  Dublin.  In  spite  of  a  relief  at- 
tempted by  the  King  of  Connaught,  who  was  recognized 
as  over-king  of  the  island  by  the  rest  of  the  tribes,  Dublin 
was  taken  by  surprise ;  and  the  marriage  of  Richard  with 
Eva,  Dermod's  daughter,  left  the  Earl  on  the  death  of  his 
father-in-law  which  followed  quickly  on  these  successes 
master  of  his  kingdom  of  Leinster.  The  new  lord  had 
soon,  however,  to  hurry  back  to  England  and  appease  the 
jealousy  of  Henry  by  the  surrender  of  Dublin  to  the 
Crown,  by  doing  homage  for  Leinster  as  an  English  lord- 
ship, and  by  accompanying  the  King  in  1171  on  a  voyage 
to  the  new  dominion  which  the  adventurers  had  won. 

Had  fate  suffered  Henry  to  carry  out  his  purpose,  the 
conquest  of  Ireland  would  now  have  been  accomplished. 
The  King  of  Connaught  indeed  and  the  chiefs  of  Ulster 
refused  him  homage,  but  the  rest  of  the  Irish  tribes  owned 


186  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

M         ■■  -  ■■■■  ■■■■         M-  ^— ^^^— ^-^^^ii^— ^^^^  .  a 

his  suzerainty ;  the  bishops  in  synod  at  Cashel  recognized 
him  as  their  lord ;  and  he  was  preparing  to  penetrate  to 
the  north  and  west,  and  to  secure  his  conquest  by  a  sys- 
tematic erection  of  castles  throughout  the  country,  when 
the  need  of  making  terms  with  Rome,  whose  interdict 
threatened  to  avenge  the  murder  of  Archbishop  Thomas, 
recalled  him  in  the  spring  of  1172  to  Normandy.  Henry 
averted  the  threatened  sentence  by  a  show  of  submission. 
The  judicial  provisions  in  the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon 
were  in  form  annulled,  and  liberty  of  election  was  restored 
in  the  case  of  bishoprics  and  abbacies.  In  reality,  how- 
ever, the  victory  rested  with  the  King.  Throughout  his 
reign  ecclesiastical  appointments  remained  practically  in 
his  hands  and  the  King's  Court  asserted  its  power  over 
the  spiritual  jurisdiction  of  the  bishops.  But  the  strife 
with  Thomas  had  roused  into  active  life  every  element  of 
danger  which  surrounded  Henry,  the  envious  dread  of  his 
neighbors, [the  disaffection  of  his  own  house,  the  disgust  of 
the  barons  at  the  repeated  blows  which  he  levelled  at  their 
military  and  judicial  power.  The  King's  withdrawal  of 
the  office  of  sheriff  from  the  great  nobles  of  the  shire  to 
entrust  it  to  the  lawyers  and  courtiers  who  already  fur- 
nished the  staff  of  the  royal  judges  quickened  the  resent- 
ment of  the  baronage  into  revolt.  His  wife  Eleanor,  now 
parted  from  Henry  by  a  bitter  hate,  spurred  her  eldest  son, 
whose  coronation  had  given  him  the  title  of  king,  to  de- 
mand possession  of  the  English  realm.  On  his  father's 
refusal  the  boy  sought  refuge  with  Lewis  of  France,  and 
his  flight  was  the  signal  for  a  vast  rising.  France,  Flan- 
ders, and  Scotland  joined  in  league  against  Henry;  his 
younger  sons,  Richard  and  Geoffry,  took  up  arms  in 
Aquitaine,  while  the  Earl  of  Leicester  sailed  from  Flan- 
ders with  an  army  of  mercenaries  to  stir  up  England  to 
revolt.  The  Earl's  descent  ended  in  a  crushing  defeat 
near  St.  Edmundsbury  at  the  hands  of  the  King's  justi- 
ciars; but  no  sooner  had  the  French  king  entered  Nor- 
mandy and  invested  Rouen  than  the  revolt  of  the  baronage 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214,  187 

burst  into  flame.  The  Scots  crossed  the  border,  Roger 
Mowbray  rose  in  Yorkshire,  Ferrars,  Earl  of  Derby,  in 
the  midland  shires,  Hugh  Bigod  in  the  eastern  counties, 
while  a  Flemish  fleet  prepared  to  support  the  insurrection 
by  a  descent  upon  the  coast.  The  murder  of  Archbishop 
Thomas  still  hung  round  Henry's  neck,  and  his  first  act 
in  hurrying  to  England  to  meet  these  perils  in  1174  was 
to  prostrate  himself  before  the  shrine  of  the  new  martyr 
and  to  submit  to  a  public  scourging  in  expiation  of  his 
sin.  But  the  penance  was  hardly  wrought  when  all  danger 
was  dispelled  by  a  series  of  triumphs.  The  King  of  Scot- 
land, William  the  Lion,  surprised  by  the  English  under 
cover  of  a  mist,  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  justiciar, 
Ranulf  de  Glanvill,  and  at  the  retreat  of  the  Scots  the 
English  rebels  hastened  to  lay  down  their  arms.  With 
the  army  of  mercenaries  which  he  had  brought  over  sea 
Henry  was  able  to  return  to  Normandy,  to  raise  the  siege 
of  Rouen,  and  to  reduce  his  sons  to  submission. 

Through  the  next  ten  years  Henry's  power  was  at 
its  height.  The  French  King  was  cowed.  The  Scotch 
King  bought  his  release  in  1175  by  owning  Henry's  suzer- 
ainty. The  Scotch  barons  did  homage,  and  English  gar- 
risons manned  the  strongest  of  the  Scotch  castles.  In 
England  itself  church  and  baronage  were  alike  at  the 
King's  mercy,  Eleanor  was  imprisoned :  and  the  younger 
Henry,  though  always  troublesome,  remained  powerless 
to  do  harm.  The  King  availed  himself  of  this  rest  from 
outer  foes  to  push  forward  his  judicial  and  administrative 
organization.  At  the  outset  of  his  reign  he  had  restored 
the  King's  court  and  the  occasional  circuits  of  its  justices; 
but  the  revolt  was  hardly  over  when  in  1176  the  Assize  of 
Northampton  rendered  this  institution  permanent  and 
regular  by  dividing  the  kingdom  into  six  districts,  to  each 
of  which  three  itinerant  judges  were  assigned.  The  cir- 
cuits thus  marked  out  correspond  roughly  with  those  that 
still  exist.  The  primary  object  of  these  circuits  was  finan- 
cial ;  but  the  rendering  of  the  King's  justice  went  on  side 


188  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II 


by  side  with  the  exaction  of  the  King's  dues,  and  this 
carrying  of  justice  to  every  corner  of  the  realm  was  made 
still  more  effective  by  the  abolition  of  all  feudal  exemp- 
tions from  the  royal  jurisdiction.  The  chief  danger  of  the 
new  sj'stem  lay  in  the  opportunities  it  afforded  to  judicial 
corruption;  and  so  great  were  its  abuses  that  in  1178 
Henry  was  forced  to  restrict  for  a  while  the  number  of 
justices  to  five,  and  to  reserve  appeals  from  their  court  to 
himself  in  council.  The  Court  of  Appeal  which  was  thus 
created,  that  of  the  King  in  Council,  gave  birth  as  time 
went  on  to  tribunal  after  tribunal.  It  is  from  it  that  the 
judicial  powers  now  exercised  by  the  Privy  Council  are 
derived,  as  well  as  the  equitable  jurisdiction  of  the  Chan- 
cellor. In  the  next  century  it  became  the  Great  Council 
of  the  realm,  and  it  is  from  this  Great  Council,  in  its  two 
distinct  capacities,  that  the  Privy  Council  drew  its  legis- 
lative, and  the  House  of  Lords  its  judicial  character.  The 
Court  of  Star  Chamber  and  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the 
Privy  Council  are  later  offshoots  of  Henry's  Court  of 
Appeal.  From  the  judicial  organization  of  the  realm,  he 
turned  to  its  militarj''  organization,  and  in  1181  an  Assize 
of  Arms  restored  the  national  fyrd  or  militia  to  the  place 
which  it  had  lost  at  the  Conquest.  The  substitution  of 
scutage  for  military  service  had  freed  the  crown  from  its 
dependence  on  the  baronage  and  its  feudal  retainers;  the 
Assize  of  Arms  replaced  this  feudal  organization  by  the 
older  obligation  of  every  freeman  to  servo  in  defence  of 
the  realm.  Every  knight  was  now  bound  to  appear  in 
coat  of  mail  and  with  shield  and  lance,  every  fieeholder 
with  lance  and  hauberk,  ever}'  burgess  and  poorer  freeman 
with  lance  and  helmet,  at  the  Kino-'s  call.     The  lew  of  an 

7  CJ  *-■ 

armed  nation  was  thus  placed  wholly  at  the  disposal  *)f  the 
Crown  for  purposes  of  defence. 

A  fresh  revolt  of  the  younger  Henry  with  his  brother 
Geoffry  in  1183  hardly  broke  the  current  of  Henry's  suc- 
cess. The  revolt  ended  with  the  young  King's  death,  and 
in  1186  this  was  followed  by  the  death  of  Geoffry.     Rich- 


Chap.  3.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  189 

ard,  now  his  father's  heir,  remained  busy  in  Aquitaine ; 
and  Henry  was  himself  occupied  with  plans  for  the  recov- 
ery of  Jerusalem,  which  had  been  taken  by  Saladin  in 
1187.  The  "Saladin  tithe,"  a  tax  levied  on  all  goods  and 
chattels,  and  memorable  as  the  first  English  instance  of 
taxation  on  personal  property,  was  granted  to  the  King  at 
the  opening  of  1188  to  support  his  intended  Crusade.  But 
the  Crusade  was  hindered  by  strife  which  broke  out  be- 
tween Richard  and  the  new  French  King,  Philip;  and 
while  Henry  strove  in  vain  to  bring  about  peace,  a  sus- 
picion that  he  purposed  to  make  his  youngest  son,  John, 
his  heir  drove  Richard  to  Philip's  side.  His  father, 
broken  in  health  and  spirits,  negotiated  fruitlessly  through 
the  winter,  but  with  the  spring  of  1189  Richard  and  the 
French  King  suddenly  appeared  before  Le  Mans.  Henry 
was  driven  in  headlong  flight  from  the  town.  Tradition 
tells  how  from  a  height  where  he  halted  to  look  back  on 
the  burning  city,  so  dear  to  him  as  his  birthplace,  the 
King  hurled  his  curse  against  God :  "  Since  Thou  hast  taken 
from  me  the  town  I  loved  best,  where  I  was  born  and 
bred,  and  where  my  father  lies  buried,  I  will  have  my 
revenge  on  Thee  too — I  will  rob  Thee  of  that  thing  Thou 
lovest  most  in  me. "  If  the  words  were  uttered,  they  were 
the  frenzied  words  of  a  dying  man.  Death  drew  Henry 
to  the  home  of  his  race,  but  Tours  fell  as  he  lay  at  Saumur, 
and  the  hunted  King  was  driven  to  beg  mercy  from  his 
foes.  They  gave  him  the  list  of  the  conspirators  against 
him :  at  its  head  was  the  name  of  one,  his  love  for  whom 
had  brought  with  it  the  ruin  that  was  crushing  him,  his 
youngest  son,  John.  "Now,"  he  said,  as  he  turned  his 
face  to  the  wall,  "  let  things  go  as  they  will — I  care  no 
more  for  myself  or  for  the  world."  The  end  was  come  at 
last.  Henry  was  borne  to  Chinon  by  the  silvery  waters  of 
Vienne,  and  muttering,  "Shame,  shame  on  a  conquered 
King,"  passed  sullenly  away. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  ANGEVIN  KINGa 

1189—1204. 

The  fall  of  Henry  the  Second  only  showed  the  strength 
of  the  system  he  had  built  up  on  this  side  the  sea.  In  the 
hands  of  the  justiciar,  Ranulf  de  Glanvill,  England  re- 
mained peaceful  through  the  last  stormy  months  of  his 
reign,  and  his  successor  Richard  found  it  undisturbed 
when  he  came  for  his  crowning  in  the  autumn  of  1189. 
Though  born  at  Oxford,  Richard  had  been  bred  in  Aqui- 
taine ;  he  was  an  utter  stranger  to  his  realm,  and  his  visit 
was  simply  for  the  purpose  of  gathering  money  for  a  Cru- 
sade. Sheriffdoms,  bishoprics,  were  sold;  even  the  su- 
premacy over  Scotland  was  bought  back  again  by  William 
the  Lion;  and  it  was  with  the  wealth  which  these  meas- 
ures won  that  Richard  made  his  way  in  1190  to  Marseilles 
and  sailed  thence  to  Messina.  Here  he  foimd  his  army 
and  a  host  under  King  Philip  of  France;  and  the  winter 
was  spent  in  quarrels  between  the  two  Kings  and  a  strife 
between  Richard  and  Tancred  of  Sicily.  In  the  spring  of 
1191  his  mother  Eleanor  arrived  with  ill  news  from  Eng- 
land. Richard  had  left  the  realm  under  the  regency  of 
two  bishops,  Hugh  Puiset  of  Durham  and  William  Long- 
champ  of  Ely ;  but  before  quitting  France  he  had  entrusted 
it  wholly  to  the  latter,  who  stood  at  the  head  of  Church 
and  State  as  at  once  justiciar  and  Papal  legate.  Long- 
champ  was  loyal  to  the  King,  but  his  exactions  and  scorn 
of  Englishmen  roused  a  fierce  hatred  among  the  baronage, 
and  this  hatred  found  head  in  John.  While  richly  gifting 
his  brother  with  earldoms  and  lands,  Richard  had  taken 
oath  from  him  that  he  would  quit  England  for  three  years. 


RICHARD,  Coeur  de  Lion 
From  his  Monumental  Effigy  at  FontevraudJ 


Ohap.  i.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1314.  191 

But  tidings  that  the  justiciar  was  striving  to  secure  the 
succession  of  Arthur,  the  child  of  his  elder  brother  Geoffry 
and  of  Constance  of  Brittany,  to  the  English  crown  at 
once  recalled  John  to  the  realm,  and  peace  between  him 
and  Longchamp  was  only  preserved  by  the  influence  of  the 
queen-mother  Eleanor.  Richard  met  this  news  by  send- 
ing William  of  Coutances,  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen,  with 
full  but  secret  powers  to  England.  On  his  landing  in  the 
summer  of  1191  William  found  the  country  already  in, 
arms.  No  battle  had  been  fought,  but  John  had  seized 
many  of  the  royal  castles,  and  the  indignation  stirred  by 
Longchamp's  arrest  of  Archbishop  Geoffry  of  York,  a 
bastard  son  of  Henry  the  Second,  called  the  whole  baron- 
age to  the  field.  The  nobles  swore  fealty  to  John  as  Rich- 
ard's successor,  and  William  of  Coutances  saw  himself 
forced  to  show  his  commission  as  justiciar,  and  to  assent 
to  Longchamp's  exile  from  the  realm. 

The  tidings  of  this  revolution  reached  Richard  in  the 
Holy  Land.  He  had  landed  at  Acre  in  the  summer  and 
joined  with  the  French  King  in  its  siege.  But  on  the  sur- 
render of  the  town  Philip  at  once  sailed  home,  while  Rich- 
ard, marching  from  Acre  to  Joppa,  pushed  inland  to  Jeru- 
salem. The  city,  however,  was  saved  by  false  news  of  its 
strength,  and  through  the  following  winter  and  the  spring 
of  1192  the  King  limited  his  activity  to  securing  the  for- 
tresses of  southern  Palestine.  In  June  he  again  advanced 
on  Jerusalem,  but  the  revolt  of  his  army  forced  him  a 
second  time  to  fall  back,  and  news  of  Philip's  intrigues 
with  John  drove  him  to  abandon  further  efforts.  There 
was  need  to  hasten  home.  Sailing  for  speed's  sake  in  a 
merchant  vessel,  he  was  driven  by  a  storm  on  the  Adri- 
atic coast,  and  while  journeying  in  disguise  overland  ar- 
rested in  December  at  Vienna  by  his  personal  enemy,  Duke 
Leopold  of  Austria.  Through  the  whole  year  John,  in 
disgust  at  his  displacement  by  William  of  Coutances,  had 
been  plotting  fruitlessly  with  Philip.  But  the  news  of 
this  capture  at  once  roused  both  to  activity.     John  secured 


192  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

his  castles  and  seized  Windsor,  giving  out  that  the  King 
would  never  return;  while  Philip  strove  to  induce  the 
Emperor,  Henry  the  Sixth,  to  whom  the  Duke  of  Austria 
had  given  Richard  up,  to  retain  his  captive.  But  a  new 
influence  now  appeared  on  the  scene.  The  See  of  Canter- 
bury was  vacant,  and  Richard  from  his  prison  bestowed 
it  on  Hubert  Walter,  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  a  nephew 
of  Ranulf  de  Glanvill  and  who  had  acted  as  secretary  to 
Bishop  Longchamp.  Hubert's  ability  was  seen  in  the 
skill  with  which  he  held  John  at  bay  and  raised  the  enor- 
mous ransom  which  Henry  demanded,  the  whole  people, 
clergy  as  well  as  lay,  paying  a  fourth  r  f  their  movable 
goods.  To  gain  his  release,  however,  Riciiard  was  forced 
besides  this  payment  of  ransom  to  do  homage  to  the  Em- 
peror, not  only  for  the  kingdom  of  Aries  with  which  Henry 
invested  him  but  for  England  itself,  whose  crown  he  re- 
signed into  the  Emperor's  hands  and  received  back  as  a 
fief.  But  John's  open  revolt  made  even  these  terms  wel- 
come, and  Richard  hurried  to  England  in  the  spring  of 
1194,  He  found  the  rising  already  quelled  by  the  decision 
with  which  the  Primate  led  an  army  against  John's  cas- 
tles, and  his  landing  was  followed  by  his  brother's  com- 
plete submission. 

The  firmness  of  Hubert  Walter  had  secured  order  in 
England,  but  oversea  Richard  found  himself  face  to  face 
with  dangers  which  he  was  too  clear-sighted  to  under- 
value. Destitute  of  his  father's  administrative  genius, 
less  ingenious  in  his  political  conceptions  than  John,  Rich- 
ard was  far  from  being  a  mere  soldier,  A  love  of  adven- 
ture, a  pride  in  sheer  physical  strength,  here  and  there  a 
romantic  generosity,  jostled  roughly  with  the  craft,  the 
unscrupulousness,  the  violence  of  his  race;  but  he  was  at 
heart  a  statesman,  cool  and  patient  in  the  execution  of  his 
plans  as  he  was  bold  in  their  conception.  "  The  devil  is 
loose;  take  care  of  yourself,"  Philip  had  written  to  John 
at  the  news  of  Richard's  release.  In  the  French  King's 
case  a  restless  ambition  was  spurred  to  action  by  insults 


Chap.  4.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1314.  193 

which  he  had  borne  during  the  Crusade.  He  had  availed 
himself  of  Kichard's  imprisonment  to  invade  Normandy, 
while  the  lords  of  Aquitaine  rose  in  open  revolt  under  the 
troubadour  Bertrand  de  Born.  Jealousy  of  the  rule  of 
strangers,  weariness  of  the  turbulence  of  the  mercenary 
soldiers  of  the  Angevins  or  of  the  greed  and  oppression  of 
their  financial  administration,  combined  with  an  impa- 
tience of  their  firm  government  and  vigorous  justice  to 
alienate  the  nobles  of  their  provinces  on  the  Continent. 
Loyalty  among  the  people  there  was  none ;  even  An jou, 
the  home  of  their  race,  drifted  toward  Philip  as  steadily 
as  Pitou.  But  in  warlike  ability  Richard  was  more  than 
Philip's  peer.  He  held  him  in  check  on  the  Norman  fron- 
tier and  surprised  his  treasure  at  Freteval  while  he  re- 
duced to  submission  the  rebels  of  Aquitaine.  Hubert 
Walter  gathered  vast  sums  to  support  the  army  of  mer- 
cenaries which  Richard  led  against  his  foes.  The  country 
groaned  under  its  burdens,  but  it  owned  the  justice  and 
firmness  of  the  Primate's  rule,  and  the  measures  which  he 
took  to  procure  money  with  as  little  oppression  as  might 
be  proved  steps  in  the  education  of  the  nation  in  its  own 
sell -government.  The  taxes  were  assessed  by  a  jury  of 
p\v:  )rn  kniglits  at  each  circuit  of  the  justices ;  the  grand  jury 
of  the  county  was  based  on  the  election  of  knights  in  the 
hundred  courts ;  and  the  keeping  of  pleas  of  the  crown  was 
taken  from  the  sheriff  and  given  to  a  newly  elected  ofiicer, 
the  coroner.  In  these  elections  were  found  at  a  later  time 
precedents  for  parliamentary  representation;  in  Hubert's 
mind  they  were  doubtless  intended  to  do  little  more  than 
reconcile  the  people  to  the  crushing  taxation.  His  work 
poured  a  million  into  the  treasury,  and  enabled  Richard 
during  a  short  truce  to  detach  Flanders  by  his  bribes  from 
the  French  alliance,  and  to  unite  the  Counts  of  Chartres, 
Champagne,  and  Boulogne  with  the  Bretons  in  a  revolt 
against  Philip.  He  won  a  yet  more  valuable  aid  in  the 
election  of  his  nephew  Otto  of  Saxony,  a  son  of  Henry  the 
Lion,  to  the  German  throne,  and  his  envoy  William  L(m^ 
Vol.  I.— 13 


194  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  XL 

champ  knitted  an  alliance  which  would  bring  the  German 
lances  to  bear  on  the  King  of  Paris. 

But  the  security  of  Normandy  was  requisite  to  the  suc- 
cess of  these  wider  plans,  and  Richard  saw  that  its  de- 
fence could  no  longer  rest  on  tho  loyalty  of  the  Norman 
people.  His  father  might  trace  his  descent  through  Ma- 
tilda from  the  line  of  Rolf,  but  the  Angevin  ruler  was  in 
fact  a  stranger  to  the  Norman.  It  was  impossible  for  a 
Norman  to  recognize  his  Duke  with  any  real  sympathy  in 
the  Angevin  prince  whom  he  saw  moving  along  the  bor- 
der at  the  head  of  Braban^on  mercenaries,  in  whoso  camp 
the  old  names  of  the  Norman  baronage  were  missing  and 
Merchade,  a  Gascon  ruffian,  held  supreme  command.  The 
purely  military  site  that  Richard  selected  for  a  new  for- 
tress with  which  he  guarded  the  border  showed  his  reali- 
zation of  the  fact  that  Normandy  could  now  only  be  held 
by  force  of  arms.  As  a  monument  of  warlike  skill  his 
"Saucy  Castle,"  Chateau  Gaillard,  stands  first  among  the 
fortresses  of  the  middle  ages.  Richard  fixed  its  site  where 
the  Seine  bends  suddenly  at  Gaillon  in  a  great  semicircle 
to  the  north,  and  where  the  valley  of  Les  Andelys  breaks 
the  line  of  the  chalk  cliffs  along  its  banks.  Blue  masses 
of  woodland  crown  the  distant  hills ;  within  the  river  curve 
lies  a  dull  reach  of  flat  meadow,  round  which  the  Seine, 
broken  with  green  islets  and  dappled  with  the  gray  and 
blue  of  the  sky,  flashes  like  a  silver  bow  on  its  way  to 
Rouen.  The  castle  formed  part  of  an  entrenched  camp 
which  Richard  designed  to  cover  his  Norznan  capital. 
Approach  by  the  river  was  blocked  by  a  stockade  and  a 
bridge  of  boats,  by  a  fort  on  the  islet  in  mid-stream,  and 
by  a  tower  which  the  King  built  in  the  valley  of  the  Gam- 
bon,  then  an  impassable  marsh.  In  the  angle  between  this 
valley  and  the  Seine,  on  a  spur  of  the  chalk  hills  which 
only  a  narrow  neck  of  land  connects  with  the  general  pla- 
teau, rose  at  the  height  of  three  hundred  feet  above  the 
river  the  crowning  fortress  of  the  whole.  Its  outworks 
and  the  walls  which  connected  it  with  the  town  and  stock- 


Chap.  4.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINQS.     1071—1214.  195 


ade  have  for  the  most  part  pjone,  but  time  and  the  hand 
of  man  have  done  little  to  destroy  the  fortifications  them- 
selves— the  fosse,  hewn  deep  into  the  solid  rock,  with  case- 
mates hollowed  out  along  its  sides,  the  fluted  walls  of  the 
citadel,  the  huge  donjon  looking  down  on  the  brown  roofs 
and  huddled  gables  of  Les  Andelys.  Even  now  in  its  ruin 
we  can  understand  the  triumphant  outburst  of  its  royal 
builder  as  he  saw  it  rising  against  the  sky :  "  How  pretty 
a  child  is  mine,  this  child  of  but  one  year  old !" 

The  easy  reduction  of  Normandy  on  the  fall  of  Chateau 
Gaillard  at  a  later  time  prove*!  Richard's  foresight;  but 
foresight  and  sagacity  were  mingled  in  him  with  a  brutal 
violence  and  a  callous  indifference  to  honor.  "  I  would  take 
it,  were  its  walls  of  iron,"  Philip  exclaimed  in  wrath  as 
he  saw  the  fortress  rise.  "  I  would  hold  it,  were  its  walls 
of  butter,"  was  the  defiant  answer  of  his  foe.  It  was 
Church  land  and  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen  laid  Normandy 
under  interdict  at  its  seizure,  but  the  King  met  the  intei 
diet  with  mockery,  and  intrigued  with  Rome  till  the  cen- 
sure was  withdrawn.  He  was  just  as  defiant  of  a  "  rain 
of  blood,"  whose  fall  scared  his  courtiers.  "  Had  an  angel 
from  heaven  bid  him  abandon  his  work,"  says  a  cool  ob- 
server, "he  would  have  answered  with  a  curse."  The 
twelvemonth's  hard  work,  in  fact,  by  securing  the  Nor- 
man frontier  set  Richard  free  to  deal  his  long-planned  blow 
at  Philip.  Money  only  was  wanting ;  for  England  had  at 
last  struck  against  the  continued  exactions.  In  1 1 98  Hugh, 
Bishop  of  Lincoln,  brought  nobles  and  bishops  to  refuse  a 
new  demand  for  the  maintenance  of  foreign  soldiers,  and 
Hubert  Walter  resigned  in  despair.  A  new  justiciar, 
Geoffrey  Fitz-Peter,  Earl  of  Essex,  extorted  some  money 
by  a  harsh  assize  of  the  forests ;  but  the  exchequer  was 
soon  drained,  and  Richard  listened  with  more  than  the 
greed  of  his  race  to  rumors  that  a  treasure  had  been  found 
in  the  fields  of  the  Limousin.  Twelve  knights  of  gold 
seated  round  a  golden  table  were  the  find,  it  was  said,  of 
the  Lord  of  Chaluz.     Treasure-trove  at  any  rate  there  was. 


196  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.       [Book  II. 

and  in  the  spring  of  1199  Richard  prowled  around  the  walls. 
But  the  castle  held  stubbornly  out  till  the  King's  greed 
passed  into  savage  menace.  He  would  hang  all,  he  swore 
— man,  woman,  the  very  child  at  the  breast.  In  the  midst 
of  his  threats  an  arrow  from  the  walls  struck  him  down. 
He  died  as  he  had  lived,  owning  the  wild  passion  which 
for  seven  years  past  had  kept  him  from  confession  lest  he 
should  be  forced  to  pardon  Philip,  forgiving  with  kingly 
generosity  the  archer  who  had  shot  him. 

The  Angevin  dominion  broke  to  pieces  at  his  death. 
John  was  acknowledged  as  King  in  England  and  Nor- 
mandy, Aquitaine  was  secured  for  him  by  its  Duchess,  his 
mother  Eleanor;  but  Anjou,  Maine,  and  Touraine  did 
homage  to  Arthur,  the  son  of  his  elder  brother  Geoffry, 
the  late  Duke  of  Brittany.  The  ambition  of  Philip,  who 
protected  his  cause,  turned  the  day  against  Arthur;  the 
Angevins  rose  against  the  French  garrisons  with  which 
the  French  King  practically  annexed  the  country,  and  in 
May  1200  a  treaty  between  the  two  kings  left  John  master 
of  the  whole  dominion  of  his  house.  But  fresh  troubles 
broke  out  in  Poitou ;  Philip,  on  John's  refusal  to  answer 
the  charges  of  the  Poitevin  barons  at  his  Court,  declared 
in  1202  his  fiefs  forfeited;  and  Arthur,  now  a  boy  of  fif- 
teen, strove  to  seize  Eleanor  in  the  castle  of  Mirabeau. 
Surprised  at  its  siege  by  a  rapid  march  of  the  King,  the 
boy  was  taken  prisoner  to  Rouen,  and  murdered  there  in 
the  spring  of  1203,  as  men  believed,  by  his  uncle's  hand. 
This  brutal  outrage  at  once  roused  the  French  provinces 
in  revolt,  while  Philip  sentenced  John  to  forfeiture  as  a 
murderer  and  marched  straight  on  Normandy.  The  ease 
with  which  the  conquest  of  the  Duchy  was  effected  can 
only  be  explained  by  the  utter  absence  of  any  popular  re- 
sistance on  the  part  of  the  Normans  themselves.  Half  a 
century  before  the  sight  of  a  Frenchman  in  the  land  would 
have  roused  every  peasant  to  arms  from  Avranches  to 
Dieppe.  But  town  after  town  surrendered  at  the  mere 
summons  of  Philip,  and  the  conquest  was  hardly  over  be- 


Chap.  4.]       UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214.  197 

fore  Normandy  settled  down  into  the  most  loyal  of  the 
provinces  of  France.  Much  of  this  was  due  to  the  wise 
liberality  with  which  Philip  met  the  claims  of  the  towns 
to  independence  and  self-government,  as  well  as  to  the 
overpowering  force  and  military  ability  with  which  the 
conquest  was  effected.  But  the  utter  absence  of  opposition 
sprang  from  a  deeper  cause.  To  the  Norman  his  transfer 
from  John  to  Philip  was  a  mere  passing  from  one  foreign 
master  to  another,  and  foreigner  for  foreigner  Philip  was 
the  less  alien  of  the  two.  Between  France  and  Normandy 
there  had  been  as  many  years  of  friendship  as  of  strife ; 
between  Norman  and  Angevin  lay  a  century  of  bitterest 
hate.  Moreover,  the  subjection  to  France  was  the  realiza- 
tion in  fact  of  a  dependence  which  had  always  existed  in 
theory ;  Philip  entered  Rouen  as  the  over-lord  of  its  Dukes ; 
while  the  submission  to  the  house  of  Anjou  had  been  the 
most  humiliating  of  all  submissions,  the  submission  to  an 
equal.  In  1204  Philip  turned  on  the  south  with  as  start- 
ling a  success.  Maine,  Anjou,  and  Touraine  passed  with 
little  resistance  into  his  hands,  and  the  death  of  Eleanor 
was  followed  by  the  submission  of  the  bulk  of  Aquitaine. 
Little  was  left  save  the  country  south  of  the  Garonne ; 
and  from  the  lordship  of  a  vast  empire  that  stretched  from 
the  Tyne  to  the  Pyrenees  John  saw  himself  reduced  at  a 
blow  to  the  realm  of  England. 


BOOK  IIL 

THE  CHARTER 

1804—1891. 


AUTHOEITIES  FOE  BOOK  IIL 

1204—1291. 

A  chronicle  drawn  up  at  the  monastery  of  Barnwell  near  Cam' 
bridge,  and  which  has  been  embodied  in  the  "Memoriale"  of  Walter 
of  Coventry,  gives  us  a  contemporary  account  of  the  period  from 
1201  to  1235.  We  possess  another  contemporary  annalist  for  the 
same  period  in  Roger  of  Weudover,  the  first  of  the  published  chroni- 
clers of  St.  Albans,  whose  work  extends  to  1235.  Though  full  of 
detail  Roger  is  inaccurate,  and  he  has  strong  royal  and  ecclesiasti- 
cal sympathies ;  but  his  chronicle  was  subsequently  revised  in  a 
more  patriotic  sense  by  another  monk  of  the  same  abbey,  Matthew 
Paris,  and  continued  in  the  "  Greater  Chronicle"  of  the  latter. 

Matthew  has  left  a  parallel  but  shorter  account  of  the  time  in  his 
"  Historia  Anglorum"  (from  the  Conquest  to  1253).  He  is  the  last 
of  the  great  chroniclers  of  his  house  ;  for  the  chronicles  of  Rishan- 
ger,  his  successor  at  St.  Albans,  and  of  the  obscurer  annalists  who 
worked  on  at  that  Abbey  till  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  are  little  save 
scant  and  lifeless  jottings  of  events  which  become  more  and  more 
local  as  time  goes  on.  The  annals  of  the  abbeys  of  Waverley,  Dun- 
stable, and  Burton,  which  have  been  published  in  the  "Annales 
Monastici"  of  the  Rolls  Series,  add  important  details  for  the  reigns 
of  John  and  Henry  III.  Those  of  Melrose,  Osney,  and  Lanercost 
help  us  in  the  close  of  the  latter  reign,  where  help  is  especially  wel- 
come. For  the  Barons'  war  we  have  besides  these  the  royalist 
chronicle  of  Wykes,  Rishanger's  fragment  published  by  the  Camden 
Society,  and  a  chronicle  of  Bartholomew  de  Cotton,  which  is  con- 
temporaiy  from  1264  to  1298.  Where  the  chronicles  fail,  however, 
the  public  documents  of  the  realm  become  of  high  importance.  The 
"Royal  Letters"  (1216—1272)  which  have  been  printed  from  the 
Patent  Rolls  by  Professor  Shirley  (Rolls  Series)  throw  great  light 
on  Henry's  politics. 

Our  municipal  history  during  this  period  is  fully  represented  by 
that  of  London.  For  the  general  history  of  the  capital  the  Rolls 
Series  has  given  us  its  "  Liber  Albus"  and  "  Liber  Custumarum, " 
while  a  vivid  account  of  its  communal  revolution  is  to  be  found  in 
the  "  Liber  de  Antiquis  Legibus"  published  by  the  Camden  Society. 
A  store  of  documents  will  be  found  in  the  Charter  Rolls  published 
by  the  Record  Commission,  in  Brady's  work  on  "English  Boroughs," 
and  in  the  "Ordinances  of  English  Gilds,"  published  with  a  re- 
markable preface  from  the  pen  of  Dr.  Brentano  by  the  Early  English 
Text  Society.  For  our  religious  and  intellectual  history  materials 
now  become  abundant.  Grosseteste's  Letters  throw  light  on  the 
state  of  the  Church  and  its  relations  with  Rome ;  those  of  Adam 
Marsh  give  us  interesting  details  of  Earl  Simon's  relation  to  the 


1802  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 


religious  movement  of  his  day  ;  and  Eccleston's  tract  on  the  arrival 
of  the  Friars  is  embodied  in  the  "  Monumenta  Franciscana. "  For  the 
Universities  we  have  the  collection  of  materials  edited  by  Mr.  Anstey 
under  the  name  of  "  Muuimenta  Academica. " 

With  the  close  of  Henry's  reign  our  directly  historic  materials 
become  scantier  and  scantier.  The  monastic  annals  we  have  before 
mentioned  are  supplemented  by  the  jejune  entries  of  Trivet  and 
Murimuth,  by  the  "  Annales  Angliaj  et  Scotiae, "  by  Rishanger's 
Chronicle,  his  "Gesta  Edwardi  Primi,"  and  three  fragments  of  his 
annals  (all  published  in  the  Rolls  Series).  The  portion  of  the  so- 
called  "  Walsingham's  History"  which  relates  to  this  period  is  now 
attributed  by  Mr.  Riley  to  Rishanger's  hand.  For  the  wars  in  the 
north  and  in  the  west  we  have  no  records  from  the  side  of  the  con- 
quered. The  social  and  physical  state  of  Wales  indeed  is  illustrated 
by  the  "  Itinerarium"  which  Gerald  du  Barri  drew  up  in  the  twelfth 
century,  but  Scotland  has  no  contemporary  chronicles  for  this 
period  ;  the  jingling  rhymes  of  Blind  Harry  are  two  hundred  years 
later  than  his  hero,  Wallace.  We  possess,  however,  a  copious  collec- 
tion of  State  papers  in  the  "  Rotuli  Scotiae, "  the  "  Documents  and 
Records  illustrative  of  the  History  of  Scotland"  which  were  edited 
by  Sir  F.  Palgrave,  as  well  as  in  Rymer's  Foedera.  For  the  history 
of  our  Parliament  the  most  noteworthy  materials  have  been  collected 
by  Professor  Stubbs  in  his  Select  Charters,  and  he  has  added  to  them 
a  short  treatise  called  "Modus  Tenendi  Parliamenta, "  which  may 
be  taken  as  a  fair  account  of  its  actual  state  and  powers  in  the  four* 
teenth  century. 


CHAPTER  L 

JOHN. 

1214—1316. 

The  loss  of  Normandy  did  more  than  drive  John  from 
the  foreign  dominions  of  his  race;  it  set  him  face  to  face 
with  England  itself.  England  was  no  longer  a  distant 
treasure-house  from  which  gold  could  be  drawn  for  wars 
along  the  Epte  or  the  Loire,  no  longer  a  possession  to  be 
kept  in  order  by  wise  ministers  and  by  flying  visits  from 
its  foreign  King.  Henceforth  it  was  his  home.  It  was 
to  be  ruled  by  his  personal  and  continuous  rule.  People 
and  sovereign  were  to  know  each  other,  to  be  brought  into 
contact  with  each  other  as  they  had  never  been  brought 
since  the  conquest  of  the  Norman.  The  change  in  the 
attitude  of  the  king  was  the  more  momentous  that  it  took 
place  at  a  time  when  the  attitude  of  the  country  itself  was 
rapidly  changing.  The  Norman  conquest  had  given  a  new 
aspect  to  the  land.  A  foreign  king  ruled  it  through  for- 
eign ministers.  Foreign  nobles  were  quartered  in  every 
manor.  A  military  organization  of  the  country  changed 
while  it  simplified  the  holding  of  every  estate.  Huge 
castles  of  white  stone  bridled  town  and  country ;  huge  stone 
minsters  told  how  the  Norman  had  bridled  even  the 
Church.  But  the  change  was  in  great  measure  an  exter- 
nal one.  The  real  life  of  the  nation  was  little  affected  by 
the  shock  of  the  Conquest.  English  institutions,  the  local, 
judicial,  and  administrative  forms  of  the  country  were  the 
same  as  of  old.  Like  the  English  tongue  they  remained 
practically  unaltered.  For  a  century  after  the  Conquest 
only  a  few  new  words  crept  in  from  the  language  of  the 


204  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  m. 

conquerors,  and  so  entirely  did  the  spoken  tongue  of  the 
nation  at  large  remain  unchanged  that  William  himself 
tried  to  learn  it  that  he  might  administer  justice  to  his 
subjects.  Even  English  literature,  banished  as  it  was 
from  the  court  of  the  stranger  and  exposed  to  the  fashion- 
able rivalry  of  Latin  scholars,  survived  not  only  in  relig- 
ious works,  in  poetic  paraphrases  of  gospels  and  psalms, 
but  in  the  great  monument  of  our  prose,  the  English 
Chronicle.  It  was  not  till  the  miserable  reign  of  Stephen 
that  the  Chronicle  died  out  in  the  Abbey  of  Peterborough. 
But  the  "Sayings  of  Alfred"  show  a  native  literature 
going  on  through  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Second,  and  the 
appearance  of  a  great  work  of  English  verse  concides  in 
point  of  time  with  the  return  of  John  to  his  island  realm. 
"  There  was  a  priest  in  the  land  whose  name  was  Laya- 
mon ;  he  was  the  son  of  Leovenath ;  may  the  Lord  be  gra- 
cious to  him !  He  dwelt  at  Earnley,  a  noble  church  on 
the  bank  of  Severn  (good  it  seemed  to  him !)  near  Rad- 
stone,  where  he  read  books.  It  came  to  mind  to  him  and 
in  his  chief  est  thought  that  he  would  tell  the  noble  deeds 
of  England,  what  the  men  were  named  and  whence  they 
came  who  first  had  English  land."  Journeying  far  and 
wide  over  the  country,  the  priest  of  Earnley  found  Bseda 
and  Wace,  the  books  too  of  St.  Albin  and  St.  Austin. 
"  Layamon  laid  down  these  books  and  turned  the  leaves ; 
he  beheld  them  lovingly;  may  the  Lord  be  gracious  to 
him !  Pen  he  took  with  finger  and  wrote  a  book-skin,  and 
the  true  words  set  together,  and  compressed  the  three 
books  into  one."  Layamon 's  church  is  now  that  of  Are- 
ley,  near  Bewdley  in  Worcestershire;  his  poem  was  in 
fact  an  expansion  of  Wace's  "  Brut"  with  insertions  from 
Bseda.  Historically  it  is  worthless ;  but  as  a  monument 
of  our  language  it  is  beyond  all  price.  In  more  than 
thirty  thousand  lines  not  more  than  fifty  Norman  words 
are  to  be  found.  Even  the  old  poetic  tradition  remains  the 
same.  The  alliterative  metre  of  the  earlier  verse  is  still 
only  slightly  affected  by  rhyming  terminations ;  the  similes 


Chae.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1391.  205 

are  the  few  natural  similes  of  Csedmon ;  the  battle-scenes 
are  painted  with  the  same  rough,  simple  joy. 

Instead  of  crushing  England  indeed  the  Conquest  did 
more  than  any  event  that  had  gone  before  to  build  up  an 
English  people.  All  local  distinctions,  the  distinction  of 
Saxon  from  Mercian,  of  both  from  Northumbrian,  died 
away  beneath  the  common  pressure  of  the  stranger.  The 
Conquest  was  hardly  over  when  we  see  the  rise  of  a  new 
national  feeling,  of  a  new  patriotism.  In  his  quiet  cell  at 
Worcester  the  monk  Florence  strives  to  palliate  by  excuses 
of  treason  or  the  weakness  of  rulers  the  defeats  of  English- 
men by  the  Danes.  Alfred,  the  great  name  of  the  English 
past,  gathers  round  him  a  legendary  worship,  and  the 
"  Sayings  of  Alfred"  embody  the  ideal  of  an  English  king. 
We  see  the  new  vigor  drawn  from  this  deeper  conscious- 
ness of  national  unity  in  a  national  action  which  began  as 
soon  as  the  Conquest  had  given  place  to  strife  among  the 
conquerors.  A  common  hostility  to  the  conquering  baron- 
age gave  the  nation  leaders  in  its  foreign  sovereigns,  and 
the  sword  which  had  been  sheathed  at  Senlac  was  drawn 
for  triumphs  which  avenged  it.  It  was  under  William 
the  Red  that  English  soldiers  shouted  scorn  at  the  Norman 
barons  who  surrendered  at  Rochester.  It  was  under  Henry 
the  First  that  an  English  army  faced  Duke  Robert  and 
his  foreign  knighthood  when  they  landed  for  a  fresh  inva- 
sion, "  not  fearing  the  Normans. "  It  was  under  the  same 
great  King  that  Englishmen  conquered  Normandy  in  turn 
on  the  field  of  Tenchebray.  This  overthrow  of  the  con- 
quering baronage,  this  union  of  the  conquered  with  the 
King,  brought  about  the  fusion  of  the  conquerors  in  the 
general  body  of  the  English  people.  As  early  as  the  days 
of  Henry  the  Second  the  descendants  of  Norman  and  Eng- 
lishman had  become  indistinguishable.  Both  found  a  bond 
in  a  common  English  feeling  and  English  patriotism,  in 
a  common  hatred  of  the  Angevin  and  Poitevin  "  foreign- 
ers" who  streamed  into  England  in  the  wake  of  Henry 
and  his  sons.     Both  had  profited  by  the  stern  discipline  of 


206  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

the  Norman  rule.  The  wretched  reign  of  Stephen  alone 
broke  the  long  peace,  a  peace  without  parallel  elsewhere, 
which  in  England  stretched  from  the  settlement  of  the 
Conquest  to  the  return  of  John.  Of  her  kings'  forays 
along  Norman  or  Aquitanian  borders  England  heard  little; 
she  cared  less.  Even  Richard's  crusade  woke  little  inter- 
est in  his  island  realm.  What  England  saw  in  her  kings 
was  "the  good  peace  they  made  in  the  land."  And  with 
peace  came  a  stern  but  equitable  rule,  judicial  and  admin- 
istrative reforms  that  carried  order  and  justice  to  every 
corner  of  the  laud,  a  wealth  that  grew  steadily  in  spite  of 
heavy  taxation,  an  immense  outburst  of  material  and  in- 
tellectual activity. 

It  was  with  a  new  English  people,  therefore,  that  John 
found  himself  face  to  face.  The  nation  which  he  fronted 
was  a  nation  quickened  with  a  new  life  and  throbbing 
with  a  new  energy.  Not  least  among  the  signs  of  this 
energy  was  the  upgrowth  of  our  Universities.  The  estab- 
lishment of  the  great  schools  which  bore  this  name  was 
everywhere  throughout  Europe  a  special  mark  of  the  im- 
pulse which  Christendom  gained  from  the  crusades.  A 
new  fervor  of  study  sprang  up  in  the  West  from  its  con- 
tact with  the  more  cultured  East.  Travellers  like  Adelard 
of  Bath  brought  back  the  first  rudiments  of  physical  and 
mathematical  science  from  the  schools  of  Cordova  or  Bag- 
dad. In  the  twelfth  century  a  classical  revival  restored 
CsBsar  and  Virgil  to  the  list  of  monastic  studies,  and  left 
its  stamp  on  the  pedantic  style,  the  profuse  classical  quota- 
tions of  writers  like  William  of  Malmesbury  or  John  of 
Salisbury.  The  scholastic  philosophy  sprang  up  in  the 
schools  of  Paris.  The  Roman  law  was  revived  by  the  im- 
perialist doctors  of  Bologna.  The  long  mental  inactivity 
of  feudal  Europe  broke  up  like  ice  before  a  summer's  sun. 
Wandering  teachers  such  as  Lan  franc  or  Anselm  crossed 
sea  and  land  to  spread  the  new  power  of  knowledge.  The 
same  spirit  of  restlessness  of  inquiry,  of  impatience  with 
the  older  traditions  of  mankind  either  local  or  intellectual 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.    1204—1291.  207 


that  drove  half  Christendom  to  the  tomb  of  its  Lord 
crowded  the  roads  with  thousands  of  young  scholars  hur- 
rying to  the  chosen  seats  where  teachers  were  gathered 
together.  A  new  power  sprang  up  in  the  midst  of  a  world 
which  had  till  now  recogTiized  no  power  but  that  of  sheer 
brute  force.  Poor  as  they  were,  sometimes  even  of  servile 
race,  the  wandering  scholars  who  lectured  in  every  cloister 
were  hailed  as  "masters"  by  the  crowds  at  their  feet. 
Abelard  was  a  foe  worthy  of  the  threats  of  councils,  of 
the  thunders  of  the  Church.  The  teaching  of  a  single 
Lombard  was  of  note  enough  in  England  to  draw  down 
the  prohibition  of  a  King. 

Vacarius  was  probably  a  guest  in  the  court  of  Archbish- 
op Theobald  where  Thomas  of  London  and  John  of  Salis- 
bury were  already  busy  with  the  study  of  the  Civil  Law.  . 
But  when  he  opened  lectures  on  it  at  Oxford  he  was  at 
once  silenced  by  Stephen,  who  was  at  that  moment  at  war 
with  the  Church  and  jealous  of  the  power  which  the  wreck 
of  the  royal  authority  was  throwing  into  Theobald's  hands. 
At  this  time  Oxford  stood  in  the  first  rank  among  English 
towns.  Its  town  church  of  St.  Martin  rose  from  the  midst 
of  a  huddled  group  of  houses,  girded  in  with  massive  walls, 
that  lay  along  the  dry  upper  ground  of  a  low  peninsula 
between  the  streams  of  Cherwell  and  the  Thames.  The 
ground  fell  gently  on  either  side,  eastward  and  westward, 
to  these  rivers ;  while  on  the  south  a  sharper  descent  led 
down  across  swampy  meadows  to  the  ford  from  which  the 
town  drew  its  name  and  to  the  bridge  that  succeeded  it. 
Around  lay  a  wild  forest  country,  moors  such  as  Cowley 
and  Bullingdon  fringing  the  course  of  Thames,  great 
woods  of  which  Shotover  and  Bagley  are  the  relics  clos- 
ing the  horizon  to  the  south  and  east.  Though  the  two 
huge  towers  of  its  Norman  castle  marked  the  strategic 
importance  of  Oxford  as  commanding  the  river  valley 
along  which  the  commerce  of  Southern  England  mainly 
flowed,  its  walls  formed  the  least  element  in  the  town's 
military  strength,  for  on  every  side  but  the  north  it  was 


208  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 

guarded  by  the  swampy  meadows  along  Cherwell  or  by 
an  intricate  network  of  streams  into  which  the  Thames 
breaks  among  the  meadows  of  Osney.  From  the  midst  of 
these  meadows  rose  a  mitred  abbey  of  Austin  Canons 
which  with  the  older  priory  of  St.  Frideswide  gave  Oxford 
some  ecclesiastical  dignity.  The  residence  of  the  Norman 
house  of  the  D'Oillis  within  its  castle,  the  frequent  visits 
of  English  kings  to  a  palace  without  its  walls,  the  pres- 
ence again  and  again  of  important  Parliaments,  marked 
its  political  weight  within  the  realm.  The  settlement  of 
one  of  the  wealthiest  among  the  English  Jewries  in  the 
very  heart  of  the  town  indicated,  while  it  promoted,  the 
activity  of  its  trade.  No  place  better  illustrates  the  trans- 
formation of  the  land  in  the  hands  of  its  Norman  masters, 
the  sudden  outburst  of  industrial  effort,  the  sudden  ex- 
pansion of  commerce  and  accumulation  of  wealth  which 
followed  the  Conquest.  To  the  west  of  the  town  rose  one 
of  the  stateliest  of  English  castles,  and  in  the  meadows 
beneath  the  hardly  less  stately  abbey  of  Osney.  In  the 
fields  to  the  north  the  last  of  the  Norman  kings  raised  his 
palace  of  Beaumont.  In  the  southern  quarter  of  the  city 
the  canons  of  St.  Frideswide  reared  the  church  which  still 
exists  as  the  diocesan  cathedral,  while  the  piety  of  the  Nor- 
man Castellans  rebuilt  almost  all  its  parish  churches  and 
founded  within  their  new  castle  walls  the  church  of  the 
Canons  of  St.  George. 

We  know  nothing  of  the  causes  which  drew  students 
and  teachers  within  the  walls  of  Oxford.  It  is  possible 
that  here  as  elsewhere  a  new  teacher  quickened  older  edu- 
cational foundations,  and  that  the  cloisters  of  Osney  and 
St.  Frideswide  already  possessed  schools  which  burst  into 
a  larger  life  under  the  impulse  of  Vacarius.  As  yet,  how- 
ever, the  fortunes  of  the  University  were  obscured  by  the 
glories  of  Paris.  English  scholars  gathered  in  thousands 
round  the  chairs  of  William  of  Champeaux  or  Abelard. 
The  English  took  their  place  as  oup  of  the  "nations"  of 
the  French  University.     John  of  Salisbury  became  famous 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.    1204—1391.  209 

as  one  of  the  Parisian  teachers.  Thomas  of  London  wan- 
dered to  Paris  from  his  school  at  Merton.  But  through 
the  peaceful  reign  of  Henry  the  Second  Oxford  quietly 
grew  in  numbers  and  repute,  and  forty  years  after  the 
visit  of  Vacarius  its  educational  position  was  fully  estab- 
lished. "When  Gerald  of  Wales  read  his  amusing  Topo^^- 
raphy  of  Ireland  to  its  students  the  most  learned  and  famous 
of  the  English  clergy  were  to  be  found  within  its  walls. 
At  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century  Oxford  stood 
without  a  rival  in  its  own  country,  while  in  European 
celebrity  it  took  rank  with  the  greatest  schools  of  the 
Western  world.  But  to  realize  this  Oxford  of  the  past  we 
must  dismiss  from  our  minds  all  recollections  of  the  Oxford 
of  the  present.  In  the  outer  look  of  the  new  University 
there  was  nothing  of  the  pomp  that  overawes  the  freshman 
as  he  first  paces  the  "  High"  or  looks  down  from  the  gallery 
of  St.  Mary's.  In  the  stead  of  long  fronts  of  venerable 
colleges,  of  stately  walks  beneath  immemorial  elms,  his- 
tory plunges  us  into  the  mean  and  filthy  lanes  of  a  mediae- 
val town.  Thousands  of  boys,  huddled  in  bare  lodging- 
houses,  clustering  round  teachers  as  poor  as  themselves  in 
church  porch  and  house  porch,  drinking,  quarrelling,  dic- 
ing, begging  at  the  corners  of  the  streets,  take  the  place 
of  the  brightly-colored  train  of  doctors  and  Heads.  Mayor 
and  Chancellor  struggled  in  vain  to  enforce  order  or  peace 
on  this  seething  mass  of  turbulent  life.  The  retainers  who 
followed  their  young  lords  to  the  University  fought  out 
the  feuds  of  their  houses  in  the  streets.  Scholars  from 
Kent  and  scholars  from  Scotland  waged  the  bitter  struggle 
of  North  and  South.  At  nightfall  roysterer  and  reveller 
roamed  with  torches  through  the  narrow  lanes,  defying 
bailiffs,  and  cutting  down  burghers  at  their  doors.  Now  a 
mob  of  clerks  plunged  into  the  Jewry  and  wiped  off  the 
memory  of  bills  and  bonds  by  sacking  a  Hebrew  house  or 
two.  Now  a  tavern  squabble  between  scholar  and  towns- 
man widened  into  a  general  broil,  and  the  academical  bell 
of  St.  Mary's  vied  with  the  town  bell  of  St.  Martin's  Id 


210  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [BoOK  m. 

t^  I         — — ^       ■  I     — .■■-  I  I  ■  I  —.■■-■.,,  ,  .  M      , 

clanging  to  arms.  Every  phase  of  ecclesiastical  contro- 
versy or  political  strife  was  preluded  by  some  fierce  out- 
break in  this  turbulent,  surging  mob.  When  England 
growled  at  the  exactions  of  the  Papacy  in  the  years  that 
were  to  follow  the  students  besieged  a  legate  in  the  abbot's 
house  at  Osney.  A  murderous  town  and  gown  row  pre- 
ceded the  opening  of  the  Barons'  War.  *'  When  Oxford 
draws  knife,"  ran  an  old  rhyme,  "  England's  soon  at  strife.'* 
But  the  turbulence  and  stir  was  a  stir  and  turbulence  of 
life.  A  keen  thirst  for  knowledge,  a  passionate  poetry  of 
devotion,  gathered  thousands  round  the  poorest  scholar 
and  welcomed  the  barefoot  friar.  Edmund  Rich — Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  and  saint  in  later  days — came  about 
the  time  we  have  reached  to  Oxford,  a  boy  of  twelve  years 
old,  from  a  little  lane  at  Abingdon  that  still  bears  his 
name.  He  found  his  school  in  an  inn  that  belonged  to  the 
abbey  of  Eynsham  where  his  father  had  taken  refuge  from 
the  world.  His  mother  was  a  pious  woman  of  the  day, 
too  poor  to  give  her  boy  much  outfit  besides  the  hair  shirt 
that  he  promised  to  wear  every  Wednesday ;  but  Edmund 
was  no  poorer  than  his  neighbors.  He  plunged  at  once 
into  the  nobler  life  of  the  place,  its  ardor  for  knowledge, 
its  mystical  piety.  "Secretly,"  perhaps  at  eventide  when 
the  shadows  were  gathering  in  the  church  of  St.  Mary  and 
the  crowd  of  teachers  and  students  had  left  its  aisles,  the 
boy  stood  before  an  image  of  the  Virgin,  and  placing  a 
ring  of  gold  upon  its  finger  took  Mary  for  his  bride.  Years 
of  study,  broken  by  a  fever  that  raged  among  the  crowded, 
noisome  streets,  brought  the  time  for  completing  his  edu- 
cation at  Paris ;  and  Edmund,  hand  in  hand  with  a  brother 
Robert  of  his,  begged  his  way  as  poor  scholars  were  wont 
to  the  great  school  of  Western  Christendom.  Here  a 
damsel,  heedless  of  his  tonsure,  wooed  him  so  pertina- 
ciously that  Edmund  consented  at  last  to  an  assignation; 
but  when  he  appeared  it  was  in  company  of  grave  academi- 
cal oflScials  who,  as  the  maiden  declared  in  the  hour  of 
penitence  which  followed,  "  straightway  whipped  the  of- 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.    1204—1291.  211 


fending  Eve  out  of  her."  Still  true  to  his  Virgin  bridal, 
Edmund  on  his  return  from  Paris  became  the  most  popu- 
lar of  Oxford  teachers.  It  is  to  him  that  Oxford  owes  her 
first  introduction  to  the  Logic  of  Aristotle.  We  see  him 
in  the  little  room  which  he  hired,  with  the  Virgin's  chapel 
hard  by,  nis  gray  gown  reaching  to  his  feet,  ascetic  in  his 
devotion,  falling  asleep  in  lecture  time  after  a  sleepless 
night  of  prayer,  but  gifted  with  a  grace  and  cheerfulness 
of  manner  which  told  of  his  French  training  and  a  chival- 
rous love  of  knowledge  that  let  his  pupils  pay  what  they 
would.  "  Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust,"  the  young  tutor 
would  say,  a  touch  of  scholarly  pride  perhaps  mingling 
with  his  contempt  of  worldly  things,  as  he  threw  down  the 
fee  on  the  dusty  window-ledge  whence  a  thievish  student 
would  sometimes  run  off  with  it.  But  even  knowledge 
brought  its  troubles ;  the  Old  Testament,  which  with  a  copy 
of  the  Decretals  long  formed  his  sole  library,  frowned 
down  upon  a  love  of  secular  learning  from  which  Edmund 
found  it  hard  to  wean  himself.  At  last,  in  some  hour  of 
dream,  the  form  of  his  dead  mother  floated  into  the  room 
where  the  teacher  stood  among  his  mathematical  diagrams. 
"What  are  these?"  she  seemed  to  say;  and  seizing  Ed- 
mund's right  hand,  she  drew  on  the  palm  three  circles  in- 
terlaced, each  of  which  bore  the  name  of  a  Person  of  the 
Christian  Trinity.  "Be  these,"  she  cried,  as  the  figure 
faded  away,  "thy  diagrams  henceforth,  my  son." 

The  story  admirably  illustrates  the  real  character  of  the 
new  training,  and  the  latent  opposition  between  the  spirit 
of  the  Universities  and  the  spirit  of  the  Church.  The 
feudal  and  ecclesiastical  order  of  the  old  mediaeval  world 
were  both  alike  threatened  by  this  power  that  had  so 
strangely  sprung  up  in  the  midst  of  them.  Feudalism 
rested  on  local  isolation,  on  the  severance  of  kingdom  from 
kingdom  and  barony  from  barony,  on  the  distinction  of 
blood  and  race,  on  the  supremacy  of  material  or  brute 
force,  on  an  allegiance  determined  by  accidents  of  place 
and  social  position.     The  University  on  the  other  hand  waa 


212  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IU. 

a  protest  against  this  isolation  of  man  from  man.  The 
smallest  school  was  European  and  not  local.  Not  merely 
every  province  of  France,  but  every  people  of  Christendom 
had  its  place  among  the  "  nations"  of  Paris  or  Padua.  A 
common  language,  the  Latin  tongue,  superseded  within 
academical  bounds  the  warring  tongues  of  Europe.  A 
common  intellectual  kinship  and  rivalry  took  the  place  of 
the  petty  strifes  which  parted  province  from  province  or 
realm  from  realm.  What  Church  and  Empire  had  both 
aimed  at  and  both  failed  in,  the  knitting  of  Christian  na- 
tions together  into  a  vast  commonwealth,  the  Universities 
for  a  time  actually  did.  Dante  felt  himself  as  little  a 
stranger  in  the  "  Latin"  quarter  round  Mont  St.  Genevieve 
as  under  the  arches  of  Bologna.  Wandering  Oxford 
scholars  carried  the  writings  of  Wyclif  to  the  libraries  of 
Prague.  In  England  the  work  of  provincial  fusion  was 
less  diflficult  or  important  than  elsewhere,  but  even  in 
England  work  had  to  be  done.  The  feuds  of  Northerner 
and  Southerner  which  so  long  disturbed  the  discipline  of 
Oxford  witnessed  at  any  rate  to  the  fact  that  Northerner 
and  Southerner  had  at  last  been  brought  face  to  face  in  its 
streets.  And  here  as  elsewhere  the  spirit  of  national  iso- 
lation was  held  in  check  by  the  larger  comprehensiveness 
of  the  University.  After  the  dissensions  that  threatened 
the  prosperity  of  Paris  in  the  thirteenth  century  Norman 
and  Gascon  mingled  with  Englishmen  in  Oxford  lecture- 
halls.  Irish  scholars  were  foremost  in  the  fray  with  the 
legate.  At  a  later  time  the  rising  of  Owen  Glyndwr  found 
hundreds  of  Welshmen  gathered  round  its  teachers.  And 
within  this  strangely  mingled  mass  society  and  govern- 
ment rested  on  a  purely  democratic  basis.  Among  Oxford 
scholars  the  son  of  the  noble  stood  on  precisely  the  same 
footing  with  the  poorest  mendicant.  Wealth,  physical 
strength,  skill  in  arms,  pride  of  ancestry  and  blood,  the 
very  grounds  on  which  feudal  society  rested,  went  for 
nothing  in  the  lecture-room.  The  University  was  a  state 
absolutely  self -governed,  and  whose  citizens  were  admitted 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CUARTER.     1204— 12«1.  213 

by  a  purely  intellectual  franchise.  Knowledge  made  the 
"master."  To  know  more  than  one's  fellows  was  a  man's 
sole  claim  to  be  a  regent  or  "  ruler"  in  the  schools.  And 
within  this  intellectual  aristocracy  all  were  equal.  When 
the  free  commonwealth  of  the  masters  gathered  in  the 
aisles  of  St.  Mary's  all  had  an  equal  right  to  counsel,  all 
had  an  equal  vote  in  the  final  decision.  Treasury  and 
library  were  at  their  complete  disposal.  It  was  their  voice 
that  named  every  oflScer,  that  proposed  and  sanctioned  every 
statute.  Even  the  Chancellor,  their  head,  who  had  at  first 
been  an  officer  of  the  Bishop,  became  an  elected  officer  of 
their  own. 

If  the  democratic  spirit  of  the  Universities  threatened 
feudalism,  their  spirit  of  intellectual  inquiry  threatened 
the  Church.  To  all  outer  seeming  they  were  purely  eccle- 
siastical bodies.  The  wide  extension  which  mediaeval 
usage  gave  to  the  word  "  orders"  gathered  the  whole  edu- 
cated world  within  the  pale  of  the  clergy.  Whatever 
might  be  their  age  or  proficiency,  scholar  and  teacher  alike 
ranked  as  clerks,  free  from  lay  responsibilities  or  the  con- 
trol of  civil  tribunals,  and  amenable  only  to  the  rule  of  the 
Bishop  and  the  sentence  of  his  spiritual  courts.  This  ec- 
clesiastical character  of  the  University  appeared  in  that 
of  its  head.  The  Chancellor,  as  we  have  seen,  was  at  first 
no  officer  of  the  University  itself,  but  of  the  ecclesiastical 
body  under  whose  shadow  it  had  sprung  into  life.  At 
Oxford  he  was  simply  the  local  officer  of  the  Bishop  of 
Lincoln  within  whose  immense  diocese  the  University  was 
then  situated.  But  this  identification  in  outer  form  with 
the  Church  only  rendered  more  conspicuous  the  difference 
of  spirit  between  them.  The  sudden  expansion  of  the  field 
of  education  diminished  the  importance  of  those  purely 
ecclesiastical  and  theological  studies  which  had  hitherto 
absorbed  tho  whole  intellectual  energies  of  mankind.  The 
revival  of  classical  literature,  the  rediscovery  as  it  were 
of  an  older  and  a  greater  world,  the  contact  with  a  larger, 
freer  life  v?hether  in  mind,  in  society,  or  in  politics  intro- 


2U  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 

duced  a  spirit  of  scepticism,  of  doubt,  of  denial  into  the 
realms  of  unquestioning  belief.  Abelard  claimed  for  rea- 
son a  supremacy  over  faith.  Florentine  poets  discussed 
with  a  smile  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Even  to  Dante, 
while  he  censures  these,  Virgil  is  as  sacred  as  Jeremiah. 
The  imperial  ruler  in  whom  the  new  culture  took  its  most 
notable  form,  Frederick  the  Second,  the  "World's  Won- 
der" of  his  time,  was  regarded  by  half  Europe  as  no  better 
than  an  infidel.  A  faint  revival  of  physical  science,  so 
"•ong  crushed  as  magic  by  the  dominant  ecclesiasticism, 
brought  Christians  into  perilous  contact  with  the  Moslem 
and  the  Jew.  The  books  of  the  Rabbis  were  no  longer  an 
accursed  thing  to  Roger  Bacon.  The  scholars  of  Cordova 
were  no  mere  Paynim  swine  to  Adelard  of  Bath.  How 
slowly  indeed  and  against  what  obstacles  science  won  its 
way  we  know  from  the  witness  of  Roger  Bacon.  "  Slowly, " 
he  tells  us,  "  has  any  portion  of  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle 
come  into  use  among  the  Latins.  His  Natural  Philosophy 
and  his  Metaphysics,  with  the  Commentaries  of  Averroes 
and  others,  were  translated  in  my  time,  and  interdicted  at 
Paris  up  to  the  year  of  grace  1237  because  of  their  asser- 
tion of  the  eternity  of  the  world  and  of  time  and  because 
of  the  book  of  the  divinations  by  dreams  (which  is  the 
third  book,  De  Somniis  et  Vigiliis)  and  because  of  many 
passages  erroneously  translated.  Even  his  logic  was 
slowly  received  and  lectured  on.  For  St.  Edmund,  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  the  first  in  my  time  who 
read  the  Elements  at  Oxford.  And  I  have  seen  Master 
Hugo,  who  first  read  the  book  of  Posterior  Analytics,  and 
I  have  seen  his  writing.  So  there  were  but  few,  consider- 
ing the  multitude  of  the  Latins,  who  were  of  any  account 
in  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle ;  nay,  very  few  indeed,  and 
scarcely  any  up  to  this  year  of  grace  1292." 

If  we  pass  from  the  English  University  to  the  English 
Town  we  see  a  progress  as  important  and  hardly  less  inter- 
esting. In  their  origin  our  boroughs  were  utterly  unlike 
those  of  the  rest  of  the  western  world.     The  cities  of  Italy 


CaAP.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204— 1S91.  ^315 

and  Provence  had  preserved  the  municipal  institutions  of 
their  Roman  past;  the  German  towns  had  been  founded 
by  Henry  the  Fowler  with  the  purpose  of  sheltering  indus- 
try from  the  feudal  oppression  around  them ;  the  communes 
of  Northern  France  sprang  into  existence  in  revolt  against 
feudal  outrage  within  their  waUs.  But  in  England  the 
tradition  of  Rome  passed  utterly  away,  while  feudal  op- 
pression was  held  fairly  in  check  by  the  Crown.  The 
English  town  therefore  was  in  its  beginning  simply  a  piece 
of  the  general  country,  organized  and  governed  precisely 
in  the  same  manner  as  the  townships  around  it.  Its  ex- 
istence witnessed  indeed  to  the  need  which  men  felt  in 
those  earlier  times  of  mutual  help  and  protection.  The 
burh  or  borough  was  probably  a  more  defensible  place  than 
the  common  village ;  it  may  have  had  a  ditch  or  mound 
about  it  instead  of  the  quickset-hedge  or  "  tun"  from  which 
the  township  took  its  name.  But  in  itself  it  was  simply  a 
township  or  group  of  townships  where  men  clustered 
whether  for  trade  or  defence  more  thickly  than  elsewhere. 
The  towns  were  different  in  the  circumstances  and  date  of 
their  rise.  Some  grew  up  in  the  fortified  camps  of  the 
English  invaders.  Some  dated  from  a  later  occupation  of 
the  sacked  and  desolate  Roman  towns.  Some  clustered 
round  the  country  houses  of  king  and  earldorman  or  the 
walls  of  church  and  monastery.  Towns  like  Bristol  were 
the  direct  result  of  trade.  There  was  the  same  variety  in 
the  mode  in  which  the  various  town  communities  were 
formed.  While  the  bulk  of  them  grew  by  simple  increase 
of  population  from  township  to  town,  larger  boroughs  such 
as  York  with  its  "  six  shires"  or  London  with  its  wards 
and  sokes  and  franchises  show  how  families  and  groups 
of  settlers  settled  dowm  side  by  side,  and  claimed  as  they 
coalesced,  each  for  itself,  its  sliire  or  share  of  the  town- 
ground  while  jealously  preserving  its  individual  life  within 
the  town-community.  But  strange  as  these  aggregations 
might  be,  the  constitution  of  the  borough  which  resulted 
from  them  was  simply  that  of  the  people  at  large.    Whether 


216  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  III. 

we  regard  it  as  a  township,  or  rather  from  its  size  as  a 
hundred  or  collection  of  townships,  the  obligations  of  the 
dwellers  within  its  bounds  were  those  of  the  townships 
round,  to  keep  fence  and  trench  in  good  repair,  to  send  a 
contingent  to  the  fyrd,  and  a  reeve  and  four  men  to  the 
hundred  court  and  shire  court.  As  in  other  townships 
land  was  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  freedom.  The 
landless  man  who  dwelt  in  a  borough  had  no  share  in 
its  corporate  life ;  for  purposes  of  government  or  property 
the  town  consisted  simply  of  the  landed  proprietors  within 
its  bounds.  The  common  lands  which  are  still  attached  to 
many  of  our  boroughs  take  us  back  to  a  time  when  each 
township  lay  within  a  ring  or  mark  of  open  ground  which 
served  at  once  as  boundary  and  pasture  land.  Each  of  the 
four  wards  of  York  had  its  common  pasture ;  Oxford  has 
still  its  own  "  Portmeadow. " 

The  inner  rule  of  the  borough  lay  as  in  the  townships 
about  it  in  the  hands  of  its  own  freemen,  gathered  in 
"borough-moot"  or  "portmannimote."  But  the  social 
change  brought  about  by  the  Danish  wars,  the  legal  re- 
quirement that  each  man  should  have  a  lord,  affected  the 
towns  as  it  affected  the  rest  of  the  country.  Some  passed 
into  the  hands  of  great  thegns  near  to  them ;  the  bulk  be- 
came known  as  in  the  demesne  of  the  king.  A  new  officer, 
the  lord's  or  king's  reeve,  was  a  sign  of  this  revolution. 
It  was  the  reeve  who  now  summoned  the  borough-moot 
and  administered  justice  in  it;  it  was  he  who  collected  the 
lord's  dues  or  annual  rent  of  the  town,  and  who  exacted 
the  services  it  owed  to  its  lord.  To  modem  eyes  these 
services  would  imply  almost  complete  subjection.  When 
Leicester,  for  instance,  passed  from  the  hands  of  the  Con- 
queror into  those  of  its  Earls,  its  townsmen  were  bound 
to  reap  their  lord's  corn-crops,  to  grind  at  his  mill,  to  re- 
deem their  strayed  cattle  from  his  pound.  The  great 
forest  around  was  the  Earl's,  and  it  was  only  out  of  his 
grace  that  the  little  borough  could  drive  its  swine  into  the 
woods  or  pasture  its  cattle  in  the  glades.     The  justice  and 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204-1291.  217 

government  of  a  town  lay  wholly  in  its  master's  hands ; 
he  appointed  its  bailiffs,  received  the  fines  and  forfeitures 
of  his  tenants,  and  the  fees  and  tolls  of  their  markets  and 
fairs.  But  in  fact  when  once  these  dues  were  paid  and 
these  services  rendered  the  English  townsman  was  practi- 
cally free.  His  rights  were  as  rigidly  defined  by  custom 
as  those  of  his  lord.  Property  and  person  alike  were  se- 
cured against  arbitrary  seizure.  He  could  demand  a  fair 
trial  on  any  charge,  and  even  if  justice  was  administered 
by  his  master's  reeve  it  was  administered  in  the  presence 
and  with  the  assent  of  his  fellow-townsmen.  The  bell 
which  swung  out  from  the  town  tower  gathered  the  bur- 
gesses to  a  common  meeting,  where  they  could  exercise 
rights  of  free  speech  and  free  deliberation  oq  their  own 
affairs.  Their  merchant-guild  over  its  ale-feast  regulated 
trade,  distributed  the  sums  due  from  the  town  among  the 
different  burgesses,  looked  to  the  due  repairs  of  gate  and 
wall,  and  acted  in  fact  pretty  much  the  same  part  as  a 
town  council  of  to-day. 

The  merchant-guild  was  the  outcome  of  a  tendency  to 
closer  association  which  found  support  in  those  principles 
of  mutual  aid  and  mutual  restraint  that  lay  at  the  base  of 
our  old  institutions.  Guilds  or  clubs  for  religious,  charit- 
able, or  social  purposes  were  common  throughout  the  coun- 
try, and  especially  common  in  boroughs,  where  men 
clustered  more  thickly  together.  Each  formed  a  sort  of 
artificial  family.  An  oath  of  mutual  fidelity  among  the 
its  members  was  substituted  for  tie  of  blood,  while  the 
guild-feast,  held  once  a  month  in  the  common  hall,  replaced 
the  gathering  of  the  kinsfolk  round  their  family  hearth. 
But  within  this  new  family  the  aim  of  the  guild  was  to  es- 
tablish a  mutual  responsibility  as  close  as  that  of  the  old. 
"  Let  all  share  the  same  lot,"  ran  its  law;  "if  any  misdo, 
let  all  bear  it."  A  member  could  look  for  aid  from  his 
guild-brothers  in  atoning  for  guilt  incurred  by  mishap. 
He  could  call  on  them  for  assistance  in  case  of  violence  or 
wrong.     If  falsely  accused  they  appeared  in  court  as  his 


818  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IU. 

compurgators,  if  poor  they  supported,  and  when  dead  they 
buried  him.  On  the  other  hand  he  was  responsible  to 
them,  as  they  were  to  the  State,  for  order  and  obedience 
to  the  laws.  A  wrong  of  brother  against  brother  was  also 
a  wrong  against  the  general  body  of  the  guild  and  was  pun- 
ished by  fine  or  in  the  last  resort  by  an  expulsion  which 
left  the  offender  a  "lawless"  man  and  an  outcast.  The 
one  difference  between  these  guilds  in  country  and  town 
was  this,  that  in  the  latter  case  from  their  close  local 
neighborhood  thej'  tended  inevitably  to  coalesce.  Under 
-^thelstan  the  London  guilds  united  into  one  for  the  pur- 
pose of  carrying  out  more  effectually  their  common  aims, 
and  at  a  later  time  we  find  the  guilds  of  Berwick  enacting 
"that  where  many  bodies  are  found  side  by  side  in  one 
place  they  may  become  one,  and  have  one  will,  and  in  the 
dealings  of  one  with  another  have  a  strong  and  hearty 
love."  The  process  was  probably  a  long  and  difficult  one, 
for  the  brotherhoods  naturally  differed  much  in  social 
rank,  and  even  after  the  union  was  effected  we  see  traces 
of  the  separate  existence  to  a  certain  extent  of  some  one 
or  more  of  the  wealthier  or  more  aristocratic  guilds.  In 
London  for  instance  the  Knighten-guild  which  seems  to 
have  stood  at  the  head  of  its  fellows  retained  for  a  long 
time  its  separate  property,  while  its  Alderman — as  the 
chief  officer  of  each  guild  was  called — became  the  Alderman 
of  the  united  guild  of  the  whole  city.  In  Canterbury  we 
find  a  similar  guild  of  Thanes  from  which  the  chief  officers 
of  the  town  seem  commonly  to  have  been  selected.  Im- 
perfect however  as  the  union  might  be,  when  once  it  was 
effected  the  town  passed  from  a  mere  collection  of  brother- 
hoods into  a  powerful  community,  far  more  effectually 
organized  than  in  the  loose  organization  of  the  township, 
and  whose  character  was  inevitably  determined  by  the 
circumstances  of  its  origin.  In  their  beginnings  our  bor- 
oughs seem  to  have  been  mainly  gatherings  of  persons  en- 
gaged in  agricultural  pursuits ;  the  first  Dooms  of  London 
provide  especially  for  the  recovery  of  cattle  belonging  to 


Char  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204-1391.  219 

the  citizens.  But  as  the  increasing  security  of  the  coun- 
try invited  the  farmer  or  the  landowner  to  settle  apart  in 
his  own  fields,  and  the  growth  of  estate  and  trade  told  on 
the  towns  themselves,  the  difference  between  town  and 
country  became  more  sharply  defined.  London  of  course 
took  the  lead  in  this  new  development  of  civic  life.  Even 
in  ^thelstan's  day  every  London  merchant  who  had  made 
three  long  voyages  on  his  own  account  ranked  as  a  Thegn. 
Its  "lithsmen,"  or  shipman's-guild,  were  of  sufficient  im- 
portance under  Harthacnut  to  figure  in  the  election  of  a 
king,  and  its  principal  street  still  tells  of  the  rapid  growth 
of  trade  in  its  name  of  "  Cheap-side"  or  the  bargaining 
place.  But  at  the  Norman  Conquest  the  commercial  ten- 
dency had  become  universal.  The  name  given  to  the 
united  brotherhood  in  a  borough  is  in  almost  every  case 
no  longer  that  of  the  "town-guild,"  but  of  the  "merchant- 
guild." 

This  social  change  in  the  character  of  the  townsmen 
produced  important  results  in  the  character  of  their  muni- 
cipal institutions.  In  becoming  a  merchant-guild  the  body 
of  citizens  who  formed  the  "  town"  enlarged  their  powers 
of  civic  legislation  by  applying  them  to  the  control  of  their 
internal  trade.  It  became  their  special  business  to  obtain 
from  the  crown  or  from  their  lords  wider  commercial 
privileges,  rights  of  coinage,  grants  of  fairs,  and  exemp- 
tion from  tolls,  while  within  the  town  itself  they  framed 
regulations  as  to  the  sale  and  quality  of  goods,  the  control 
of  markets,  and  the  recovery  of  debts.  It  was  only  by 
slow  and  difficult  advances  that  each  step  in  this  securing 
of  privilege  was  won.  Still  it  went  steadily  on.  When- 
ever we  get  a  glimpse  of  the  inner  history  of  an  English 
town  we  find  the  same  peaceful  revolution  in  progress, 
services  disappearing  through  disuse  or  omission,  while 
privileges  and  immunities  are  being  purchased  in  hard 
cash.  The  lord  of  the  town,  whether  he  were  king,  baron, 
or  abbot,  was  commonly  thriftless  or  poor,  and  the  capture 
of  a  noble,  or  the  campaign  of  a  sovereign,  or  the  building 


220  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

of  some  new  minster  by  a  prior,  brought  about  an  appeal 
to  the  thrifty  burghers,  who  were  ready  to  fill  again  their 
master's  treasury  at  the  price  of  the  strip  of  parchment 
which  gave  them  freedom  of  trade,  of  justice,  and  of  gov- 
ernment. In  the  silent  growth  and  elevation  of  the  Eng- 
lish people  the  boroughs  thus  led  the  way.  Unnoticed  and 
despised  by  prelate  and  noble  they  preserved  or  won  back 
again  the  full  tradition  of  Teutonic  liberty.  The  right  of 
self-government,  the  right  of  free  speech  in  free  meeting, 
the  right  to  equal  justice  at  the  hands  of  one's  equals, 
were  brought  safely  across  ages  of  tyranny  by  the  burghers 
and  shopkeepers  of  the  towns.  In  the  quiet  quaintly- 
named  streets,  and  town-mead  and  market-place,  in  the 
lord's  mill  beside  the  stream,  in  the  bell  that  swung  out 
its  summons  to  the  crowded  borough-mote,  in  merchant- 
guild,  and  church-guild  and  craft-guild,  lay  the  life  of  Eng- 
lishmen who  were  doing  more  than  knight  and  baron  to 
make  England  what  she  is,  the  life  of  their  home  and  their 
trade,  of  their  sturdy  battle  with  oppression,  their  steady, 
ceaseless  struggle  for  right  and  freedom. 

London  stood  first  among  English  towns,  and  the  privi- 
leges which  its  citizens  won  became  precedents  for  the 
burghers  of  meaner  boroughs.  Even  at  the  Conquest  its 
power  and  wealth  secured  it  a  full  recognition  of  all  its 
ancient  privileges  from  the  Conqueror.  In  one  way  in- 
deed it  profited  by  the  revolution  which  laid  England  at 
the  feet  of  the  stranger.  One  immediate  result  of  "Wil- 
liam's success  was  an  immigration  into  England  from  the 
Continent.  A  peaceful  invasion  of  the  Norman  traders 
followed  quick  on  the  invasion  of  the  Norman  soldiery. 
Every  Norman  noble  as  he  quartered  himself  upon  English 
lands,  every  Norman  abbot  as  he  entered  his  English 
cloister,  gathered  French  artists,  French  shopkeepers, 
French  domestics  about  him.  Round  the  Abbey  of  Battle 
which  William  founded  on  the  site  of  his  great  victory 
"Gilbert  the  Foreigner,  Gilbert  the  Weaver,  Benet  the 
Steward,  Hugh  the  Secretarv.  Baldwin  the  Tailor,"  dwelt 


Chap.  l.J  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1291.  221 

mixed  with  the  English  tenantry.  But  nowhere  did  these 
immigrants  play  so  notable  a  part  as  in  London.  The 
Normans  had  had  mercantile  establishments  in  London  as 
early  as  the  reign  of  -^thelred,  if  not  of  Eadgar.  Such 
settlements,  however,  naturally  formed  nothing  more  than 
a  trading  colony  like  the  colony  of  the  "  Emperor's  Men," 
or  Easterlings.  But  with  the  Conquest  their  number 
greatly  increased.  "  Many  of  the  citizens  of  Rouen  and 
Caen  passed  over  thither,  preferring  to  be  dwellers  in  this 
city,  inasmuch  as  it  was  fitter  for  their  trading  and  better 
stored  with  the  merchandise  in  which  they  were  wont  to 
traffic."  The  status  of  these  traders  indeed  had  wholly 
changed.  They  could  no  longer  be  looked  upon  as  strangers 
in  cities  which  had  passed  under  the  Norman  rule.  In 
some  cases,  as  at  Norwich,  the  French  colony  isolated 
itself  in  a  separate  French  town,  side  by  side  with  the 
English  borough.  But  in  London  it  seems  to  have  taken 
at  once  the  position  of  a  governing  class.  Gilbert  Beket, 
the  father  of  the  famous  Archbishop,  was  believed  in  later 
days  to  have  been  one  of  the  portreeves  of  London,  the 
predecessor  of  its  mayors;  he  held  in  Stephen's  time  a 
large  property  in  houses  within  the  walls,  and  a  proof  of 
his  civic  importance  was  preserved  in  the  annual  visit  of 
each  newly-elected  chief  magistrate  to  his  tomb  in  a  little 
chapel  which  he  had  founded  in  the  churchj-ard  of  St. 
Paul's.  Yet  Gilbert  was  one  of  the  Norman  strangers 
who  followed  in  the  wake  of  the  Conqueror ;  he  was  by 
birth  a  burgher  of  Rouen,  as  his  wife  was  of  a  burgher 
family  from  Caen. 

It  was  partly  to  this  infusion  of  foreign  blood,  partly 
no  doubt  to  the  long  internal  peace  and  order  secured  by 
the  Norman  rule,  that  London  owed  the  wealth  and  im- 
portance to  which  it  attained  during  the  reign  of  Henry 
the  First.  The  charter  which  Henry  granted  it  became 
a  model  for  lesser  boroughs.  The  King  yielded  its  citi- 
zens the  right  of  justice ;  each  townsman  could  claim  to 
be  tried   by  his  fellow-townsmen  in  the  town-court  or 


222  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

hustings  whose  sessions  took  place  every  week.  They 
were  subject  onl}^  to  the  old  English  trial  by  oath,  and  ex- 
empt from  the  trial  by  battle  which  the  Normans  intro- 
duced. Their  trade  was  protected  from  toll  or  exaction 
over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land.  The  King,  how- 
ever, still  nominated  in  London  as  elsewhere  the  portreeve, 
or  magistrate  of  the  town,  nor  were  the  citizens  as  yet 
united  together  in  a  commune  or  corporation.  But  an 
imperfect  civic  organization  existed  in  the  "wards"  or 
quarters  of  the  town,  each  governed  by  its  own  alderman, 
and  in  the  "  guilds"  or  voluntary  associations  of  merchants 
or  traders  which  insured  order  and  mutual  protection  for 
their  members.  Loose  too  as  these  bonds  may  seem,  they 
were  drawn  firmly  together  by  the  older  English  traditions 
of  freedom  which  the  towns  preserved.  The  London  bur- 
gesses gathered  in  their  town-mote  when  the  bell  swung 
out  from  tlip  bell-tower  of  St.  Paul's  to  deliberate  freely 
on  their  own  affairs  under  the  presidency  of  their  alder- 
man. Here  too  they  mustered  in  arms  if  danger  threat- 
ened the  city,  and  delivered  the  town-banner  to  their  cap- 
tain, the  Norman  baron  Fitz- Walter,  to  lead  them  against 
the  enemy. 

Few  boroughs  had  as  yet  attained  to  such  power  as  this, 
but  the  instance  of  Oxford  shows  how  the  freedom  of 
London  told  on  the  general  advance  of  English  towns.  In 
spite  of  antiquarian  fancies  it  is  certain  that  no  town  had 
arisen  on  the  site  of  Oxford  for  centuries  after  the  with- 
drawal of  the  Roman  legions  from  the  isle  of  Britain. 
Though  the  monastery  of  St.  Frideswide  rose  in  the  tur- 
moil of  the  eighth  century  on  the  slope  which  led  down  to 
a  ford  cvcross  the  Thames,  it  is  long  before  we  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  borough  that  must  have  grown  up  under 
its  walls.  The  first  definite  evidence  for  its  existence  lies 
in  a  brief  entry  of  the  English  Chronicle  which  recalls  its 
seizure  by  Eadward  the  Elder,  but  the  form  of  this  entry 
shows  that  the  town  was  already  a  considerable  one,  and 
in  the  last  wrestle  of  England  -^ith  the  Dane  its  position 


Chap.  l.J  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  223 

on  the  borders  of  Mercia  and  "Wessex  combined  with  its 
command  of  the  upper  valley  of  the  Thames  to  give  it 
military  and  political  importance.  Of  the  life  of  its  bur- 
gesses however  we  still  know  little  or  nothing.  The  names 
of  its  parishes,  St.  Aldate,  St.  Ebbe,  St.  Mildred,  St.  Ed- 
mund, show  how  early  church  after  church  gathered  round 
the  earlier  town-church  of  St.  Martin.  But  the  men  of 
the  little  town  remain  dim  to  us.  Their  town-mote,  or  the 
"  portmannimote"  as  it  was  called,  which  was  held  in  the 
churchyard  of  St.  Martin,  still  lives  in  a  shadow  of  its 
older  self  as  the  Freeman's  Common  Hall — their  town- 
mead  is  still  the  Portmeadow.  But  it  is  only  by  later 
charters  or  the  record  of  Doomsday  that  we  see  them  going 
on  pilgrimage  to  the  shrines  of  Winchester,  or  chaffering 
in  their  market-place,  or  judging  and  law-making  in  their 
hustings,  their  merchant-guild  regulating  trade,  their  reeve 
gathering  his  king's  dues  of  tax  or  money  or  marshalling 
his  troop  of  burghers  for  the  king's  wars,  their  boats  pay- 
ing toll  of  a  hundred  herrings  in  Lent-tide  to  the  Abbot 
of  Abingdon,  as  they  floated  down  the  Thames  toward 
London. 

The  number  of  houses  marked  waste  in  the  survey  marks 
the  terrible  suffering  of  Oxford  in  the  Norman  Conquest: 
but  the  ruin  was  soon  repaired,  and  the  erection  of  its 
castle,  the  rebuilding  of  its  churches,  the  planting  of  a 
Jewry  in  the  heart  of  the  town,  showed  in  what  various 
ways  the  energy  of  its  new  masters  was  given  an  impulse 
to  its  life.  It  is  a  proof  of  the  superiority  of  the  Hebrew 
dwellings  to  the  Christian  houses  about  them  that  each  of 
the  later  town-halls  of  the  borough  had,  before  their  ex- 
pulsion, been  houses  of  Jews.  Nearly  all  the  larger  dwell- 
ing houses  in  fact  which  were  subsequently  converted  into 
academic  halls  bore  traces  of  the  same  origin  in  names, 
Buch  as  Moysey's  Hall,  Lombard's  Hall,  or  Jacob's  Hall. 
The  Jewish  houses  were  abundant,  for  besides  the  greater 
Jewry  in  the  heart  of  it,  there  was  a  lesser  Jewry  scattered 
over  its  southern  quarter,  and  we  can  hardly  doubt  that 


224  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

this  abundance  of  substantial  buildings  in  the  town  was 
at  least  one  of  the  causes  which  drew  teachers  and  scholars 
within  its  walls.  The  Jewry,  a  town  within  a  town,  lay  here 
as  elsewhere  isolated  and  exempt  from  the  common  justice, 
the  common  life  and  self-government  of  the  borough.  On 
all  but  its  eastern  side  too  the  town  was  hemmed  in  by 
jurisdictions  independent  of  its  own.  The  precincts  of  the 
Abbey  of  Osney,  the  wide  "  bailey"  of  the  Castle,  bounded 
it  narrowly  on  the  west.  To  the  north,  stretching  away 
beyond  the  little  church  of  St.  Giles,  lay  the  fields  of  the 
royal  manor  of  Beaumont.  The  Abbot  of  Abingdon,  whose 
woods  of  Cumnor  and  Bagley  closed  the  southern  horizon, 
held  his  leet-court  in  the  hamlet  of  Grampound  beyond  the 
bridge.  Nor  was  the  whole  space  within  the  walls  subject 
to  the  self-government  of  the  citizens.  The  Jewry  had  a 
rule  and  law  of  its  own.  Scores  of  householders,  dotted 
over  street  and  lane,  were  tenants  of  castle  or  abbey  and 
paid  no  suit  or  service  at  the  borough  court. 

But  within  these  narrow  bounds  and  amid  these  vari- 
ous obstacles  the  spirit  of  municipal  liberty  lived  a  life  the 
more  intense  that  it  was  so  closely  cabined  and  confined. 
Nowhere  indeed  was  the  impulse  which  London  was  giv- 
ing likely  to  tell  with  greater  force.  The  "  barge-men"  of 
Oxford  were  connected  even  before  the  Conquest  with  the 
"boatmen,"  or  shippers,  of  the  capital.  In  both  cases  it 
is  probable  that  the  bodies  bearing  these  names  represented 
what  is  known  as  the  merchant-guild  of  the  town.  Royal 
recognition  enables  us  to  trace  the  merchant-guild  of  Oxford 
from  the  time  of  Henry  the  First.  Even  then  lands,  isl- 
ands, pastures  belonged  to  it,  and  among  them  the  same 
Portmeadow  which  is  familiar  to  Oxford  men  pulling 
lazily  on  a  summer's  noon  to  Godstow.  The  connection 
between  the  two  guilds  was  primarily  one  of  trade.  "  In 
the  time  of  King  Eadward  and  Abbot  Ordric"  the  channel 
of  the  Thames  beneath  the  walls  of  the  Abbey  of  Abing- 
don became  so  blocked  up  that  boats  could  scarce  pass  as 
far  as  Oxford,  and  it  was  at  the  joint  prayer  of  the  bur- 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1391.  225 

gesses  of  London  and  Oxford  that  the  abbot  dug  a  new 
channel  through  the  meadow  to  the  south  of  his  church. 
But  by  the  time  of  Henry  the  Second  closer  bonds  than 
this  linked  the  two  cities  together.  In  case  of  any  doubt 
or  contest  about  judgments  in  their  own  court  the  bur- 
gesses of  Oxford  were  empowered  to  refer  the  matter  to 
the  decision  of  London,  "and  whatsoever  the  citizens  of 
London  shall  adjudge  in  such  cases  shall  be  deemed  right." 
The  judicial  usages,  the  municipal  rights  of  each  city 
were  assimilated  by  Henry's  charter.  "  Of  whatsoever 
matter  the  men  of  Oxford  be  put  in  plea,  they  shall  de- 
raign  themselves  according  to  the  law  and  custom  of  the 
city  of  London  and  not  otherwise,  because  they  and  the 
citizens  of  London  are  of  one  and  the  same  custom,  law, 
and  liberty." 

A  legal  connection  such  as  this  could  hardly  fail  to  bring 
with  it  an  identity  of  municipal  rights.  Oxford  had  al- 
ready passed  through  the  earlier  steps  of  her  advance 
toward  municipal  freedom  before  the  conquest  of  the  Nor- 
man. Her  burghers  assembled  in  their  own  portmanni- 
mote,  and  their  dues  to  the  crown  were  assessed  at  a  fixed 
sum  of  honey  or  coin.  But  the  formal  definition  of  their 
rights  dates,  as  in  the  case  of  London,  from  the  time  of 
Henry  the  First.  The  customs  and  exemptions  of  its 
townsmen  were  confirmed  by  Henry  the  Second  "  as  ever 
they  enjoyed  them  in  the  time  of  Henry  my  grandfather, 
and  in  like  manner  as  my  citizens  of  London  hold  them." 
By  this  date  the  town  had  attained  entire  judicial  and 
commercial  freedom,  and  liberty  of  external  commerce 
was  secured  by  the  exemption  of  its  citizens  from  toll  on 
the  king's  lands.  Complete  independence  was  reached 
when  a  charter  of  John  substituted  a  mayor  of  the  town's 
own  choosing  for  the  reeve  or  bailiff  of  the  crown.  But 
dry  details  such  as  these  tell  little  of  the  quick  pulse  of 
popular  life  that  beat  in  the  thirteenth  century  through 
Buch  a  community  as  that  of  Oxford.  The  church  of  St. 
Martin  in  the  very  heart  of  it,  at  the  "Quatrevoix"  or 
Vol.  L— 15 


226  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

Carfax  where  its  four  streets  met,  was  the  centre  of  the 
city  life.  The  town-mote  was  held  in  its  churchyard. 
Justice  was  administered  ere  yet  a  town-hall  housed  the 
infant  magistracy  by  mayor  or  bailiff  sitting  beneath  a 
low  pent-house,  the  "  penniless  bench"  of  later  days,  out- 
side its  eastern  wall.  Its  bell  summoned  the  burghers  to 
council  or  arms.  Around  the  church  the  trade-guilds  were 
i-anged  as  in  some  vast  encampment.  To  the  south  of  it 
lay  Spicerj''  and  Vintner}^,  the  quarter  of  the  richer  bur- 
gesses. Fish  Street  fell  noisily  down  to  the  bridge  and 
the  ford.  The  Corn-market  occupied  then  as  now  the 
street  which  led  to  Northgate.  The  stalls  of  the  butchers 
stretched  along  the  "  Butcher-row, "  which  formed  the  road 
to  the  bailey  and  the  castle.  Close  beneath  the  church  lay 
a  nest  of  huddled  lanes,  broken  by  a  stately  synagogue, 
and  traversed  from  time  to  time  by  the  yellow  gaberdine 
of  the  Jew.  Soldiers  from  the  castle  rode  clashing  through 
the  narrow  streets ;  the  bells  of  Osney  clanged  from  the 
swampy  meadows ;  processions  of  pilgrims  wound  through 
gates  and  lanes  to  the  shrine  of  St.  Frideswide.  Frays 
were  common  enough;  now  the  sack  of  a  Jew's  house; 
now  burgher  drawing  knife  on  burgher;  now  an  outbreak 
of  the  young  student  lads  who  were  growing  every  day  in 
numbers  and  audacity.  But  as  yet  the  town  was  well  in 
1:1  and.  The  clang  of  the  city  bell  called  every  citizen  to  his 
door ;  the  call  of  the  mayor  brought  trade  after  trade  with 
bow  in  hand  and  banners  flying  to  enforce  the  king's 
peace. 

The  advance  of  towns  which  had  grown  up  not  on  the 
royal  domain  but  around  abbey  or  castle  was  slower  and 
more  diflficult.  The  story  of  St.  Edmundsbury  shows  how 
gradual  was  the  transition  from  pure  serfage  to  an  imper- 
fect freedom.  Much  that  had  been  plough-land  here  in 
the  Confessor's  time  was  covered  with  houses  by  the  time 
of  Henry  *Jie  Second.  The  building  of  the  great  abbey- 
church  drew  its  craftsmen  and  masons  to  mingle  with  the 
ploughmeai  and  reapers  of  the   Abbot's   domain.      The 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  227 

troubles  of  the  time  helped  here  as  elsewhere  the  progress 
of  the  town ;  serfs,  fugitives  from  justice  or  their  lord,  the 
trader,  the  Jew,  naturally  sought  shelter  under  the  strong 
hand  of  St.  Edmund.  But  the  settlers  were  wholly  at  the 
Abbot's  mercy.  Not  a  settler  but  was  bound  to  pay  his 
pence  to  the  Abbot's  treasury,  to  plough  a  rood  of  his  land, 
to  reap  in  his  harvest-field,  to  fold  his  sheep  in  the  Abbey 
folds,  to  help  bring  the  annual  catch  of  eels  from  the  Abbey 
waters.  Within  the  four  crosses  that  bounded  the  Abbot's 
domain  land  and  water  were  his ;  the  cattle  of  the  towns- 
men paid  for  their  pasture  on  the  common ;  if  the  fullers 
refused  the  loan  of  their  cloth  the  cellarer  would  refuse  the 
use  of  the  stream  and  seize  their  looms  wherever  he  found 
them.  No  toll  might  be  levied  from  tenants  of  the  Abbey 
farms,  and  customers  had  to  wait  before  shop  and  stall  tiU 
the  buyers  of  the  Abbot  had  had  the  pick  of  the  market. 
There  was  little  chance  of  redress,  for  if  burghers  com- 
plained in  folk-mote  it  was  before  the  Abbot's  officers  that 
its  meeting  was  held ;  if  they  appealed  to  the  alderman  he 
was  the  Abbot's  nominee  and  received  the  horn,  the  sym- 
bol of  his  office,  at  the  Abbot's  hands.  Like  all  the  greater 
revolutions  of  society,  the  advance  from  this  mere  serfage 
was  a  silent  one ;  indeed  its  more  galling  instances  of  op- 
pression seem  to  have  slipped  unconsciously  away.  Some, 
like  the  eel-fishing,  were  commuted  for  an  easy  rent; 
others,  like  the  slavery  of  the  fullers  and  the  toll  of  flax, 
simply  disappeared.  By  usage,  by  omission,  by  down- 
right forgetfulness,  here  by  a  little  struggle,  there  by  a 
present  to  a  needy  abbot,  the  town  won  freedom. 

But  progress  was  not  always  unconscious,  and  one  in- 
cident in  the  history  of  St.  Edmundsbury  is  remarkable, 
not  merely  as  indicating  the  advance  of  law,  but  yet  more 
as  marking  the  part  which  a  new  moral  sense  of  man's 
right  to  equal  justice  was  to  play  in  the  general  advance 
of  the  realm.  Rude  as  the  borough  was,  it  possessed  the 
right  of  meeting  in  full  assembly  of  the  townsmen  for 
government  and  law.     Justice  was  administered  in  pres- 


238  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


ence  of  the  burgesses,  and  the  accused  acquitted  or  con- 
demned by  the  oath  of  his  neighbors.  Without  the  bor- 
ough bounds  however  the  system  of  Norman  judicature 
prevailed ;  and  the  rural  tenants  who  did  suit  and  service 
at  the  Cellarer's  court  were  subjected  to  the  trial  by  battle. 
The  execution  of  a  farmer  named  Kebel  who  came  under 
this  feudal  jurisdiction  brought  the  two  systems  into  vivid 
contrast.  Kebel  seems  to  have  been  guiltless  of  the  crime 
laid  to  his  charge;  but  the  duel  went  against  him  and  he 
was  hung  just  without  the  gates.  The  taunts  of  the  towns- 
men woke  his  fellow- farmers  to  a  sense  of  wrong.  "  Had 
Kebel  been  a  dweller  within  the  borough,"  said  the  bur- 
gesses, "  he  would  have  got  his  acquittal  from  the  oaths  of 
his  neighbors,  as  our  liberty  is ;"  and  even  the  monks  were 
moved  to  a  decision  that  their  tenants  should  enjoy  equal 
freedom  and  justice  with  the  townsmen.  The  franchise 
of  the  town  was  extended  to  the  rural  possessions  of  the 
Abbey  without  it;  the  farmers  "came  to  the  toll-house, 
were  written  in  the  alderman's  toll,  and  paid  the  town- 
penny."  A  chance  story  preserved  in  a  charter  of  later 
date  shows  the  same  struggle  for  justice  going  on  in  a 
greater  town.  At  Leicester  the  trial  by  compurgation, 
the  rough  predecessor  of  trial  by  jury,  had  been  abolished 
by  the  Earls  in  favor  of  trial  by  battle.  The  aim  of  the 
burgess  was  to  regain  their  old  justice,  and  in  this  a 
touching  incident  at  last  made  them  successful.  "It 
chanced  that  two  kinsmen,  Nicholas  the  son  of  Aeon  and 
Geoffrey  the  son  of  Nicholas,  waged  a  duel  about  a  certain 
piece  of  land  concerning  which  a  dispute  had  arisen  be- 
tween them ;  and  they  fought  from  the  first  to  the  ninth 
hour,  each  conquering  by  turns.  Then  one  of  them  fleeing 
from  the  other  till  he  came  to  a  certain  little  pit,  as  he 
stood  on  the  brink  of  the  pit  and  was  about  to  fall  therein, 
his  kinsman  said  to  him,  'Take  care  of  the  pit,  turn  back, 
lest  thou  shouldst  fall  into  it. '  Thereat  so  much  clamor 
and  noise  was  made  by  the  bystanders  and  those  who  were 
sitting  around  that  the  Earl  heard  these  clamors  as  far  off 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  339 

as  the  castle,  and  be  inquired  of  some  how  it  was  there 
was  such  a  clamor,  and  answer  was  made  to  him  that  two 
kinsmen  were  fighting  about  a  certain  piece  of  ground, 
and  that  one  bad  fled  till  be  reached  a  certain  little  pit, 
and  that  as  he  stood  over  the  pit  and  was  about  to  fall  into  it 
the  other  warned  him.  Then  the  townsmen  being  moved 
with  pity  made  a  covenant  with  the  Earl  that  they  should 
give  him  threepence  yearly  for  each  bouse  in  the  High 
Street  that  had  a  gable,  on  condition  that  be  should  grant 
to  them  that  the  twenty-four  jurors  who  were  in  Leicester 
from  ancient  times  should  from  that  time  forward  discuss 
and  decide  all  pleas  they  might  have  among  themselves." 
At  the  time  we  have  reached  this  struggle  for  emancipa- 
tion was  nearly  over.  The  larger  towns  had  secured  the 
privilege  of  self-government,  the  administration  of  justice, 
and  the  control  of  their  own  trade.  The  reigns  of  Eichard 
and  John  mark  the  date  in  our  municipal  history  at  which 
towns  began  to  acquire  the  right  of  electing  their  own 
chief  magistrate,  the  Portreeve  or  Mayor,  who  had  till 
then  been  a  nominee  of  the  crown.  But  with  the  close  of 
this  outer  struggle  opened  an  inner  struggle  between  the 
various  classes  of  the  townsmen  themselves.  The  growth 
of  wealth  and  industry  was  bringing  with  it  a  vast  in- 
crease of  population.  The  mass  of  the  new  settlers,  com- 
posed as  they  were  of  escaped  serfs,  of  traders  without 
landed  holdings,  of  families  who  had  lost  their  original 
lot  in  the  borough,  and  generally  of  the  artisans  and  the 
poor,  had  no  part  in  the  actual  life  of  the  town.  The  right 
of  trade  and  of  the  regulation  of  trade  in  common  with  all 
other  forms  of  jurisdiction  lay  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the 
landed  burghers  whom  we  have  described.  By  a  natural 
process  too  their  superiority  in  wealth  produced  a  fresh 
division  between  the  "  burghers"  of  the  merchant-guild  and 
the  unenfranchised  mass  around  them.  The  same  change 
which  severed  at  Florence  the  seven  Greater  Arts  or  trades 
from  the  fourteen  Lesser  Arts,  and  which  raised  the  three 
occupations  of  banking,  the  manufacture  and  the  dyeing 


1230  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE      [Book  III. 


of  cloth  to  a  position  of  superioritj^  even  within  the  privi- 
leged circle  of  the  seven,  told  though  with  less  force  on 
the  English  boroughs.  The  burghers  of  the  merchant-guild 
gradually  concentrated  themselves  on  the  greater  opera- 
tions of  commerce,  on  trades  which  required  a  larger  capi- 
tal, while  the  meaner  employments  of  general  traffic  were 
abandoned  to  their  poorer  neighbors.  This  advance  in 
the  division  of  labor  is  marked  by  such  severances  as  we 
note  in  the  thirteenth  century  of  the  cloth  merchant  from 
the  tailor  or  the  leather  merchant  from  the  butcher. 

But  the  result  of  this  severance  was  all-important  in  its 
influence  on  the  constitution  of  our  towns.  The  members 
of  the  trades  thus  abandoned  by  the  wealthier  burghers 
formed  themselves  into  Craft-guilds  which  soon  rose  into 
dangerous  rivalry  with  the  original  Merchant-guild  of  the 
town.  A  seven  years'  apprenticeship  formed  the  neces- 
sary prelude  to  full  membership  of  these  trade-guilds. 
Their  regulations  were  of  the  minutest  character;  the 
quality  and  value  of  work  were  rigidly  prescribed,  the 
hours  of  toil  fixed  "from  daybreak  to  curfew, "♦and  strict 
provision  made  against  competition  in  labor.  At  each 
meeting  of  these  guilds  their  members  gathered  round  the 
Craft-box  which  contained  the  rules  of  their  Society,  and 
stood  with  bared  heads  as  it  was  opened.  The  warden 
and  a  quorum  of  guild-brothers  formed  a  court  which  en- 
forced the  ordinances  of  the  guild,  inspected  all  work  done 
by  its  members,  confiscated  unlawful  tools  or  unworthy 
goods ;  and  disobedience  to  their  orders  was  punished  by 
fines  or  in  the  last  resort  by  expulsion,  which  involved  the 
loss  of  a  right  to  trade.  A  common  fund  was  raised  by 
contributions  among  the  members,  which  not  only  pro- 
vided for  the  trade  objects  of  the  guild  but  sufficed  to  found 
chantries  and  masses  and  set  up  painted  windows  in  the 
church  of  their  patron  saint.  Even  at  the  present  day  the 
arms  of  a  craft-guild  may  often  be  seen  blazoned  in  cathe- 
drals side  by  side  with  those  of  prelates  and  of  kings.  But 
it  was  only  by  slow  degrees  that  they  rose  to  such  a  height 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  231 

as  this.  The  first  steps  in  their  existence  were  the  most 
diflScult,  for  to  enable  a  trade-guild  to  carry  out  its  objects 
with  any  success  it  was  first  necessary  that  the  whole  body 
of  craftsmen  belonging  to  the  trade  should  be  compelled  to 
join  the  guild,  and  secondly  that  a  legal  control  over  the 
trade  itself  should  be  secured  to  it.  A  royal  charter  was 
indispensable  for  these  purposes,  and  over  the  grant  of 
these  charters  took  place  the  first  struggle  with  the  mer- 
chant-guilds which  had  till  then  solely  exercised  jurisdiction 
over  trade  within  the  boroughs.  The  weavers,  who  were 
the  first  trade-guild  to  secure  royal  sanction  in  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  First,  were  still  engaged  in  a  contest  for  exist- 
ence as  late  as  the  reign  of  John,  when  the  citizens  of 
London  bought  for  a  time  the  suppression  of  their  guild. 
Even  under  the  House  of  Lancaster  Exeter  was  engaged 
in  resisting  the  establishment  of  a  tailors'  guild.  From 
the  eleventh  century  however  the  spread  of  these  societies 
went  steadily  on,  and  the  control  of  trade  passed  more  and 
more  from  the  merchant-guilds  to  the  craft-guilds. 

It  is  this  struggle,  to  use  the  technical  terms  of  the  time, 
of  the  " greater  folk"  against  the  "lesser  folk,"  or  of  the 
"  commune, "  the  general  mass  of  the  inhabitants,  against 
the  "  prudhommes, "  or  "wiser"  few,  which  brought  about, 
as  it  passed  from  the  regulation  of  trade  to  the  general 
government  of  the  town,  the  great  civic  revolution  of  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries.  On  the  Continent, 
and  especially  along  the  Rhine,  the  struggle  was  as  fierce 
as  the  supremacy  of  the  older  burghers  had  been  complete. 
In  Koln  the  craftsmen  had  been  reduced  to  all  but  serfage, 
and  the  merchant  of  Brussels  might  box  at  his  will  the 
ears  of  "  the  man  without  heart  or  honor  who  lives  by  his 
toil."  Such  social  tyranny  of  class  over  class  brought  a 
century  of  bloodshed  to  the  cities  of  Germany;  but  in 
England  the  tyranny  of  class  over  class  was  restrained  by 
the  general  tenor  of  the  law,  and  the  revolution  took  for 
the  most  part  a  milder  form.  The  longest  and  bitterest 
strife  of  all  was  naturally  at  London.     Nowhere  had  the 


332  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 

territorial  constitution  struck  root  so  deepl}^  and  nowhere 
had  the  landed  oligarchy  risen  to  such  a  height  of  wealth 
and  influence.  The  city  was  divided  into  wards,  each  of 
which  was  governed  by  an  alderman  drawn  from  the  rul- 
ing class.  In  some  indeed  the  office  seems  to  have  become 
hereditary.  The  "magnates,"  or  "barons,"  of  the  mer- 
chant-guild advised  alone  on  all  matters  of  civic  govern- 
ment or  trade  regulation,  and  distributed  or  assessed  at 
their  will  the  revenues  or  burdens  of  the  town.  Such  a 
position  afforded  an  opening  for  corruption  and  oppression 
of  the  most  galling  kind ;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  a  gen- 
eral impression  of  the  unfair  assessment  of  the  dues  levied 
on  the  poor  and  the  undue  burdens  which  were  thrown 
on  the  unenfranchised  classes  which  provoked  the  first 
serious  discontent.  In  the  reign  of  Richard  the  First, 
William  of  the  Long  Beard,  though  one  of  the  governing 
body,  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  a  conspiracy  which 
in  the  panic-stricken  fancy  of  the  burghers  numbered  fifty 
thousand  of  the  craftsmen.  His  eloquence,  his  bold  defi- 
ance of  the  aldermen  in  the  town-mote,  gained  him  at  any 
rate  a  wide  popularity,  and  the  crowds  who  surrounded 
him  hailed  him  as  "the  savior  of  the  poor."  One  of  his 
addresses  is  luckily  preserved  to  us  by  a  hearer  of  the 
time.  In  mediaeval  fashion  he  began  with  a  text  from 
the  Vulgate,  "Ye  shall  draw  water  with  joy  from  the 
fountain  of  the  Saviour."  "I,"  he  began,  "am  the  savior 
of  the  poor.  Ye  poor  men  who  have  felt  the  weight  of 
rich  men's  hands,  draw  from  my  fountain  waters  of 
wholesome  instruction  and  that  with  joy,  for  the  time  of 
your  visitation  is  at  hand.  For  I  will  divide  the  waters 
from  the  waters.  It  is  the  people  who  are  the  waters,  and 
I  will  divide  the  lowly  and  faithful  folk  from  the  proud 
and  faithless  folk ;  I  will  part  the  chosen  from  the  repro- 
bate as  light  from  darkness."  But  it  was  in  vain  that  he 
strove  to  win  royal  favor  for  the  popular  cause.  The  sup- 
port of  the  moneyed  classes  was  essential  to  Richard  in 
the  costly  wars  with  Philip  of  France;  and  the  Justiciar, 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1291  333 

Archbishop  Hubert,  after  a  moment  of  hesitation  issued 
orders  for  William  Longbeard's  arrest.  William  felled 
with  an  axe  the  first  soldier  who  advanced  to  seize  him, 
and  taking  refuge  with  a  few  adherents  in  the  tower  of  St. 
Mary-le-Bow  summoned  his  adherents  to  rise.  Hubert, 
however,  who  had  already  flooded  the  city  with  troops, 
with  bold  contempt  of  the  right  of  sanctuary  set  fire  to  the 
tower.  William  was  forced  to  surrender,  and  a  burgher's 
son,  whose  father  he  had  slain,  stabbed  him  as  he  came 
forth.  With  his  death  the  quarrel  slumbered  for  more 
than  fifty  years.  But  the  movement  toward  equality 
went  steadily  on.  Under  pretext  of  preserving  the  peace 
the  unenfranchised  townsmen  united  in  secret  frith-guilds 
of  their  own,  and  mobs  rose  from  time  to  time  to  sack  the 
houses  of  foreigners  and  the  wealthier  burgesses.  Nor 
did  London  stand  alone  in  this  miovement.  In  all  the 
larger  towns  the  same  discontent  prevailed,  the  same  social 
growth  called  for  new  institutions,  and  in  their  silent  re- 
volt against  the  oppression  of  the  Merchant-guild  the  Craft- 
guilds  were  training  themselves  to  stand  forward  as  cham- 
pions of  a  wider  liberty  in  the  Barons'  War. 

Without  the  towns  progress  was  far  slower  and  more 
fitful.  It  would  seem  indeed  that  the  conquest  of  the 
Norman  bore  harder  on  the  rural  population  than  on  any 
other  class  of  Englishmen.  Under  the  later  kings  of  the 
house  of  -(Alfred  the  number  of  absolute  slaves  and  the 
number  of  freemen  had  alike  diminished.  The  pure  slave 
class  had  never  been  numerous,  and  it  had  been  reduced 
by  the  efforts  of  the  Church,  perhaps  by  the  general  con- 
vulsion of  the  Danish  wars.  But  these  wars  had  often 
driven  the  ceorl  or  freeman  of  the  township  to  "  commend" 
himself  to  a  thegn  who  pledged  him  his  protection  in  con- 
sideration of  payment  in  a  rendering  of  labor.  It  is  prob- 
able that  these  dependent  ceorls  are  the  "  villeins"  of  the 
Norman  epoch,  the  most  numerous  class  of  the  Domesday 
Survey,  men  sunk  indeed  from  pure  freedom  and  bound 
both  to  soil  and  lord,  but  as  yet  preserving  much  of  their 


234  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  HI 


older  rights,  retaining  their  land,  free  as  against  all  men 
but  their  lord,  and  still  sending  representatives  to  hun- 
dred-moot and  shire-moot.  They  stood  therefore  far  above 
the  "  landless  man,"  the  man  who  had  never  possessed  even 
under  the  old  constitution  political  rights,  w^hom  the  legis- 
lation of  the  English  Kings  had  forced  to  attach  himself 
to  a  lord  on  pain  of  outlawry,  and  who  served  as  house- 
hold servant  or  as  hired  laborer  or  at  the  best  as  rent- 
paying  tenant  of  land  which  was  not  his  own.  The 
Norman  knight  or  lawyer,  however,  saw  little  distinction 
between  these  classes;  and  the  tendency  of  legislation 
under  the  Angevins  was  to  blend  all  in  a  single  class  of 
serfs.  While  the  pure  "  theow"  or  absolute  slave  disap- 
peared therefore,  the  ceorl  or  villein  sank  lower  in  the  social 
scale.  But  though  the  rural  population  was  undoubtedly 
thrown  more  together  and  fused  into  a  more  homogeneous 
class,  its  actual  position  corresponded  very  imperfectly 
with  the  view  of  the  lawyers.  All  indeed  were  dependents 
on  a  lord.  The  manor-house  became  the  centre  of  every 
English  village.  The  manor-court  was  held  in  its  hall;  it 
was  here  that  the  lord  or  his  steward  received  homage,  re- 
covered fines,  held  the  view  of  frank-pledge,  or  enrolled  the 
villagers  in  their  tithing.  Here  too,  if  the  lord  possessed 
criminal  jurisdiction,  was  held  his  justice  court,  and  with- 
out its  doors  stood  his  gallows.  Around  it  lay  the  lord's 
demesne  or  home-farm,  and  the  cultivation  of  this  rested 
wholly  with  the  "  villeins"  of  the  manor.  It  was  by  them 
that  the  great  barn  was  filled  with  sheaves,  the  sheep 
shorn,  the  grain  malted,  the  wood  hewn  for  the  manor-hall 
fire.  These  services  were  the  labor-rent  by  which  they 
held  their  lands,  and  it  was  the  nature  and  extent  of  this 
labor-rent  which  parted  one  class  of  the  population  from 
another.  The  "villein,"  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
was  bound  only  to  gather  in  his  lord's  harvest  and  to  aid 
in  the  ploughing  and  sowing  of  autumn  and  Lent.  The 
cottar,  the  bordar,  and  the  laborer  were  bound  to  help  in 
the  work  of  the  home-farm  throughout  the  year. 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1391.  235 


But  these  services  and  the  time  of  rendering  them  were 
strictly  limited  by  custom,  not  only  in  the  case  of  the  ceorl 
or  villein  but  in  that  of  the  originally  meaner  "  landless 
man."  The  possession  of  his  little  homestead  v^ith  the 
ground  around  it,  the  privilege  of  turning  out  his  cattle 
on  the  waste  of  the  manor,  passed  quietly  and  insensibly 
from  mere  indulgences  that  could  be  granted  or  withdrawn 
at  a  lord's  caprice  into  rights  that  could  be  pleaded  at  law. 
The  number  of  teams,  the  fines,  the  reliefs,  the  services 
that  a  lord  could  claim,  at  first  mere  matter  of  oral  tradi- 
tion, came  to  be  entered  on  the  court-roll  of  the  manor,  a 
copy  of  which  became  the  title-deed  of  the  villein.  It  was 
to  this  that  he  owed  the  name  of  "  copy-holder"  which  at 
a  later  time  superseded  his  older  title.  Disputes  were  set- 
tled by  a  reference  to  this  roll  or  on  oral  evidence  of  the 
custom  at  issue,  but  a  social  arrangement  which  was  emi- 
nently characteristic  of  the  English  spirit  of  compromise 
generally  secured  a  fair  adjustment  of  the  claims  of  villein 
and  lord.  It  was  the  duty  of  the  lord's  bailiff  to  exact 
their  due  services  from  the  villeins,  but  his  coadjutor  in 
this  office,  the  reeve  or  foreman  of  the  manor,  was  chosen 
by  the  tenants  themselves  and  acted  as  representative  of 
their  interests  and  rights.  A  fresh  step  toward  freedom 
was  made  by  the  growing  tendency  to  commute  labor- 
services  for  money-paj-ments.  The  population  was  slowly 
increasing,  and  as  the  law  of  gavel-kind  which  was  appli- 
cable to  all  landed  estates  not  held  by  military  tenure  di- 
vided the  inheritance  of  the  tenantry  equally  among  theii 
3ons  the  holding  of  each  tenant  and  the  services  due  from 
it  became  divided  in  a  corresponding  degree.  A  labor- 
rent  thus  became  more  difficult  to  enforce,  while  the  in- 
erease  of  wealth  among  the  tenantry  and  the  rise  of  a  new 
spirit  of  independence  made  it  more  burdensome  to  those 
who  rendered  it.  It  was  probabl}^  from  this  cause  that 
the  commutation  of  the  arrears  of  labor  for  a  money  pay- 
ment, which  had  long  prevailed  on  every  estate,  gradually 
developed  into  a  general  commutation  of  services.     We 


286  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

have  already  witnessed  the  silent  progress  of  this  remark- 
able change  in  the  case  of  St.  Edmundsbury,  but  the  prac- 
tice soon  became  universal,  and  "malt-silver,"  "wood- 
silver,  "  and  "  larder-silver"  gradually  took  the  place  of  the 
older  personal  services  on  the  court-rolls.  The  process  of 
commutation  was  hastened  by  the  necessities  of  the  lords 
themselves.  The  luxury  of  the  castle-hall,  the  splendor 
and  pomp  of  chivalry,  the  cost  of  campaigns  drained  the 
purses  of  knight  and  baron,  and  the  sale  of  freedom  to  a 
serf  or  exemption  from  services  to  a  villein  afforded  an 
easy  and  tempting  mode  of  refilling  them.  In  this  process 
even  Kings  took  part.  At  a  later  time,  under  Edward  the 
Third,  commissioners  were  sent  to  royal  estates  for  the 
especial  purpose  of  selling  manumissions  to  the  King's 
serfs ;  and  we  still  possess  the  names  of  those  who  were 
enfranchised  with  their  families  by  a  payment  of  hard 
cash  in  aid  of  the  exhausted  exchequer. 

Such  was  the  people  which  had  been  growing  into  a  na- 
tional unity  and  a  national  vigor  while  English  king  and 
English  baronage  battled  for  rule.  But  king  and  baron- 
age themselves  had  changed  like  townsman  and  ceorl.  The 
loss  of  Normandy,  entailing  as  it  did  the  loss  of  their  Nor- 
man lands,  was  the  last  of  many  influences  which  had  been 
giving  through  a  century  and  a  half  a  national  temper  to 
the  baronage.  Not  only  the  "  new  men,"  the  ministers  out 
of  whom  the  two  Henries  had  raised  a  nobility,  were  bound 
to  the  Crown,  but  the  older  feudal  houses  now  owned  them- 
selves as  Englishmen  and  set  aside  their  aims  after  per- 
sonal independence  for  a  love  of  the  general  freedom  of  the 
land.  They  stood  out  as  the  natural  leaders  of  a  people 
bound  together  by  the  stern  government  which  had  crushed 
all  local  division,  which  had  accustomed  men  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  a  peace  and  justice  that  imperfect  as  it  seems  to 
modern  eyes  was  almost  unexampled  elsewhere  in  Europe, 
and  which  had  trained  them  to  something  of  their  old  free 
government  again  by  the  very  machinery  of  election  it  used 
10  facilitate  its  heavy  taxation.     On  the  other  hand  the 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1391.  237 

loss  of  Normandy  brought  home  the  King.  The  growth 
which  had  been  going  on  had  easily  escaped  the  eyes  of" 
rulers  who  were  commonly  absent  from  the  realm  and  busy 
with  the  affairs  of  countries  beyond  the  sea.  Henry  the 
Second  had  been  absent  for  years  from  England :  Richard 
had  only  visited  it  twice  for  a  few  months :  John  had  as 
yet  been  almost  wholly  occupied  with  his  foreign  domin- 
ions. To  him  as  to  his  brother  England  had  as  yet  been 
nothing  but  a  land  whose  gold  paid  the  mercenaries  that 
followed  him,  and  whose  people  bowed  obediently  to  his 
will.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  between  such  a  ruler  and 
such  a  nation  once  brought  together  strife  must  come :  but 
that  the  strife  came  as  it  did  and  ended  as  it  did  was  due 
above  all  to  the  character  of  the  King. 

"  Foul  as  it  is,  hell  itself  is  defiled  by  the  fouler  presence 
of  John."  The  terrible  verdict  of  his  contemporaries  has 
passed  into  the  sober  judgment  of  history.  Externally 
John  possessed  all  the  quickness,  the  vivacity,  the  clever- 
ness, the  good-humor,  the  social  charm  which  distinguished 
his  house.  His  worst  enemies  owned  that  he  toiled  stead- 
ily and  closely  at  the  work  of  administration.  He  was 
fond  of  learned  men  like  Gerald  of  Wales.  He  had  a 
strange  gift  of  attracting  friends  and  of  winning  the  love 
of  women.  But  in  his  inner  soul  John  was  the  worst  out- 
come of  the  Angevins.  He  united  into  one  mass  of  wick- 
edness their  insolence,  their  selfishness,  their  unbridled 
lust,  their  cruelty  and  tyranny,  their  shamelessness,  their 
superstition,  their  cynical  indifference  to  honor  or  truth. 
In  mere  boyhood  he  tore  with  brutal  levity  the  beards  of 
the  Irish  chieftains  who  came  to  own  him  as  their  lord. 
His  ingratitude  and  perfidy  brought  his  father  with  sor- 
row to  the  grave.  To  his  brother  he  was  the  worst  of 
traitors.  All  Christendom  believed  him  to  be  the  mur- 
derer of  his  nephew,  Arthur  of  Brittany.  He  abandoned 
one  wife  and  was  faithless  to  another.  His  punishments 
were  refinements  of  cruelty,  the  starvation  of  children,  the 
crushing  old  men  under  copes  of  lead.     His  court  was  a 


238  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 

brothel  where  no  woman  was  sale  from  the  royal  lust,  and 
where  his  cynicism  loved  to  publish  the  news  of  his  vic- 
tim's shame.  He  was  as  craven  in  his  superstition  as  he 
was  daring  in  his  impiety.  Though  he  scoffed  at  priests 
and  turned  his  back  on  the  mass  even  amid  the  solemnities 
of  his  coronation,  he  never  stirred  on  a  journey  without 
hanging  relics  round  his  neck.  But  with  the  wickedness 
of  his  race  he  inherited  its  profound  ability.  His  plan  for 
the  relief  of  Chateau  Gaillard,  the  rapid  march  by  which 
he  shattered  Arthur's  hopes  at  Mirabel,  showed  an  inborn 
genius  for  war.  In  the  rapidity  and  breadth  of  his  polit- 
ical combinations  he  far  surpassed  the  statesmen  of  his 
time.  Throughout  his  reign  we  see  him  quick  to  discern 
the  difficulties  of  his  position,  and  inexhaustible  in  the  re- 
sources with  which  he  met  them.  The  overthrow  of  his 
continental  power  only  spurred  him  to  the  formation  of  a 
league  which  all  but  brought  Philip  to  the  ground ;  and 
the  sudden  revolt  of  England  was  parried  by  a  shameless 
alliance  with  the  Papacy.  The  closer  study  of  John's  his- 
tory clears  away  the  charges  of  sloth  and  incapacity  with 
which  men  tried  to  explain  the  greatness  of  his  fall.  The 
awful  lesson  of  his  life  rests  on  the  fact  that  the  king  who 
lost  Normandy,  became  the  vassal  of  the  Pope,  and  per- 
ished in  a  struggle  of  despair  against  English  freedom  was 
no  weak  and  indolent  voluptuary  but  the  ablest  and  most 
ruthless  of  the  Angevins. 

From  the  moment  of  his  return  to  England  in  1204  John's 
whole  energies  were  bent  to  the  recovery  of  his  dominions 
on  the  Continent.  He  impatiently  collected  money  and 
men  for  the  support  of  those  adherents  of  the  House  of 
Anjou  who  were  still  struggling  against  the  arms  of  France 
in  Poitou  and  Guienne,  and  in  the  summer  of  1205  he 
gathered  an  army  at  Portsmouth  and  prepared  to  cross  the 
Channel.  But  his  project  was  suddenly  thwarted  by  the 
resolute  opposition  of  the  Primate,  Hubert  Walter,  and 
the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  William  Marshal.  So  completely 
had  both  the  baronage  and  the  Church  been  humbled  by 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204-1291,  239 


his  father  that  the  attitude  of  their  representatives  revealed 
to  the  King  a  new  spirit  of  national  freedom  which  was 
rising  around  him,  and  John  at  once  braced  himself  to  a 
struggle  with  it.  The  death  of  Hubert  Walter  in  July, 
only  a  f^w  days  after  his  protest,  removed  his  most  for- 
midable opponent,  and  the  King  resolved  to  neutralize  the 
opposition  of  the  Church  by  placing  a  creature  of  his  own 
at  its  head.  John  de  Grey,  Bishop  of  Norwich,  was  elected 
by  the  monks  of  Canterbury  at  his  bidding,  and  enthroned 
as  Primate.  But  in  a  previous  though  informal  gathering 
the  convent  had  already  chosen  its  sub-prior,  Reginald,  as 
Archbishop.  The  rival  claimants  hastened  to  appeal  to 
Rome,  and  their  appeal  reached  the  Papal  Court  before 
Christmas.  The  result  of  the  contest  was  a  startling  one, 
both  for  themselves  and  for  the  King.  After  a  year's  care- 
ful examination  Innocent  the  Third,  who  now  occupied 
the  Papal  throne,  quashed  at  the  close  of  1206  both  the 
contested  elections.  The  decision  was  probably  a  just  one, 
but  Innocent  was  far  from  stopping  there.  The  monks 
who  appeared  before  him  brought  powers  from  the  convent 
to  choose  a  new  Primate  should  their  earlier  nomination 
be  set  aside;  and  John,  secretly  assured  of  their  choice  of 
Grey,  had  promised  to  confirm  their  election.  But  the 
bribes  which  the  King  lavished  at  Rome  failed  to  win  the 
Pope  over  to  this  plan ;  and  whether  from  mere  love  of 
power,  for  he  was  pushing  the  Papal  claims  of  supremacy 
over  Christendom  further  than  any  of  his  predecessors,  or  as 
may  fairly  be  supposed  in  despair  of  a  free  election  within 
English  bounds,  Innocent  commanded  the  monks  to  elect 
in  his  presence  Stephen  Langton  to  the  archiepiscopal  see.' 
Personally  a  better  choice  could  not  have  been  made, 
for  Stephen  was  a  man  who  by  sheer  weight  of  learning 
and  holiness  of  life  had  risen  to  the  dignity  of  Cardinal 
and  whose  after-career  placed  him  in  the  front  rank  of 
English  patriots.  But  in  itself  the  step  was  an  usurpation 
of  the  rights  both  of  the  Church  and  of  the  Crown.  The 
King  at  once  met  it  with  resistance.     When  Innocent  c^u- 


240  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  ILL 


secrated  the  new  Primate  in  June,  1207,  and  threatened 
the  realm  with  interdict  if  Langton  were  any  longer  ex- 
cluded from  his  see,  John  replied  by  a  counter-threat  that 
the  interdict  should  be  followed  by  the  banishment  of  the 
clergy  and  the  mutilation  of  every  Italian  he  could  seize  in 
the  realm.  How  little  he  feared  the  priesthood  he  showed 
when  the  clergy  refused  his  demand  of  a  thirteenth  of 
movables  for  the  whole  country  and  Archbishop  Geoffry 
of  York  resisted  the  tax  before  the  Council.  John  banished 
the  Archbishop  and  extorted  the  money.  Innocent,  how- 
ever, was  not  a  man  to  draw  back  from  his  purpose,  and 
in  March,  1208,  the  interdict  he  had  threatened  fell  upon  the 
land.  All  worship  save  that  of  a  few  privileged  orders, 
all  administration  of  Sacraments  save  that  of  private  bap- 
tism, ceased  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  country : 
the  church-bells  were  silent,  the  dead  lay  unburied  on  the 
ground.  Many  of  the  bishops  fled  from  the  country.  The 
Church  in  fact,  so  long  the  main  support  of  the  royal  power 
against  the  baronage,  was  now  driven  into  opposition. 
Its  change  of  attitude  was  to  be  of  vast  moment  in  the 
struggle  which  was  impending ;  but  John  recked  little  of 
the  future ;  he  replied  to  the  interdict  by  confiscating  the 
lands  of  the  clergy  who  observed  it,  by  subjecting  them 
in  spite  of  their  privileges  to  the  royal  courts,  and  by  leav- 
ing outrages  on  them  unpunished.  "Let  him  go,"  said 
John,  when  a  Welshman  was  brought  before  him  for  the 
murder  of  a  priest,  "he  has  killed  my  enemy."  In  1209 
the  Pope  proceeded  to  the  further  sentence  of  excommuni- 
cation, and  the  King  was  formally  cut  off  from  the  pale 
of  the  Church.  But  the  new  sentence  was  met  with  the 
same  defiance  as  the  old.  Five  of  the  bishops  fled  ove? 
fioa,  and  secret  disaffection  was  spreading  widely,  but  there 
was  no  public  avoidance  of  the  excommunicated  King. 
An  Archdeacon  of  Norwich  who  withdrew  from  his  ser- 
vice was  crushed  to  death  under  a  cope  of  lead,  and  the 
hint  was  sufficient  to  prevent  either  prelate  or  noble  from 
following  his  example. 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1391.  241 

The  attitude  of  John  showed  the  power  which  the  ad- 
ministrative reforms  of  his  father  had  given  to  the  Crown. 
He  stood  alone,  with  nobles  estranged  from  him  and  the 
Church  against  him,  but  his  strength  seemed  utterly  un- 
broken. '  From  the  first  moment  of  his  rule  John  had  defied 
the  baronage.  The  promise  to  satisfy  their  demand  for 
redress  of  wrongs  in  the  past  reign,  a  promise  made  at  hia 
election,  remained  unfulfilled ;  when  the  demand  was  re- 
peated he  answered  it  by  seizing  their  castles  and  taking 
their  children  as  hostages  for  their  loyalty.  The  cost  of 
his  fruitless  threats  of  war  had  been  met  by  heavy  and  re- 
peated taxation,  by  increased  land  tax  and  increased  scut- 
age.  The  quarrel  with  the  Church  and  fear  of  their  revolt 
only  deepened  his  oppression  of  the  nobles.  He  drove  De 
Braose,  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  the  Lords  Marchers, 
to  die  in  exile,  while  his  wife  and  grandchildren  were  be- 
lieved to  have  been  starved  to  death  in  the  royal  prisons. 
On  the  nobles  who  still  clung  panic-stricken  to  the  court 
of  the  excommunicate  king  John  heaped  outrages  worse 
than  death.  Illegal  exactions,  the  seizure  of  their  castles, 
the  preference  shown  to  foreigners,  were  small  provoca- 
tions compared  with  his  attacks  on  the  honor  of  their  wives 
and  daughters.  But  the  baronage  still  submitted.  The 
financial  exactions  indeed  became  light  as  John  filled  his 
treasury  with  the  goods  of  the  Church ;  the  King's  vigor 
was  seen  in  the  rapidity  with  which  he  crushed  a  rising 
of  the  nobles  in  Ireland  and  foiled  an  outbreak  of  the 
Welsh ;  while  the  triumphs  of  his  father  had  taught  the 
baronage  its  weakness  in  any  single-handed  struggle 
against  the  Crown.  Hated  therefore  as  he  was  the  land 
remained  still.  Only  one  weapon  was  now  left  in  Inno- 
cent's hands.  Men  held  then  that  a  King,  once  excom- 
municate, ceased  to  be  a  Christian  or  to  have  claims  on 
the  obedience  of  Christian  subjects.  As  spiritual  heads 
of  Christendom,  the  Popes  had  ere  now  asserted  their 
right  to  remove  such  a  ruler  from  his  throne  and  to  give 
it  to  a  worthier  than  he;  and  it  was  this  right  which  lu- 
VOL.  L— 16  . 


24:2  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 

nocent  at  last  felt  himself  driven  to  exercise.  After  use- 
less threats  he  issued  in  1312  a  bull  of  deposition  against 
John,  absolved  his  subjects  from  their  allegiance,  pro- 
claimed a  crusade  against  him  as  an  enemy  to  Christianity 
and  the  Church,  and  committed  the  execution  of  the  sen- 
tence to  the  King  of  the  French.  John  met  the  announce- 
ment of  this  step  with  the  same  scorn  as  before.  His  in- 
solent disdain  suffered  the  Roman  legate.  Cardinal  Pandult, 
to  proclaim  his  deposition  to  his  face  at  Northampton. 
When  Philip  collected  an  army  for  an  attack  on  England 
an  enormous  host  gathered  at  the  King's  call  on  Barham 
Down;  and  the  English  fleet  dispelled  all  danger  of  inva- 
sion by  crossing  the  Channel,  by  capturing  a  number  of 
French  ships,  and  by  burning  Dieppe. 

But  it  was  not  in  England  only  that  the  King  showed 
his  strength  and  activity.  Vile  as  he  was,  John  possessed 
in  a  high  degree  the  political  ability  of  his  race,  and  in 
the  diplomatic  efforts  with  which  he  met  the  danger  from 
France  he  showed  himself  his  father's  equal.  The  barons 
of  Poitou  were  roused  to  attack  Philip  from  the  south. 
John  bought  the  aid  of  the  Count  of  Flanders  on  his  north- 
ern border.  The  German  King,  Otto,  pledged  himself  to 
bring  the  knighthood  of  Germany  to  support  an  invasion 
of  France.  But  at  the  moment  of  his  success  in  diplomacy 
John  suddenly  gave  way.  It  was  in  fact  the  revelation 
of  a  danger  at  home  which  shook  him  from  his  attitude  of 
contemptuous  defiance.  The  bull  of  deposition  gave  fresh 
energy  to  every  enemy.  The  Scotch  King  was  in  corre- 
spondence with  Innocent.  The  Welsh  princes  who  had 
just  been  forced  to  submission  broke  out  again  in  war. 
John  hanged  their  hostages,  and  called  his  host  to  muster 
for  a  fresh  inroad  into  Wales,  but  the  army  met  only  to 
become  a  fresh  source  of  danger.  Powerless  to  oppose  the 
King  openly,  the  baronage  had  plunged  almost  to  a  man 
into  secret  conspiracies.  The  hostility  of  Philip  had  dis- 
pelled their  dread  of  isolated  action ;  many  indeed  had  even 
promised  aid  to  the  French  King  on  his  landing,    John 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  243 

found  himself  in  the  midst  of  hidden  enemies ;  and  noth- 
ing could  have  saved  him  but  the  haste — whether  of  panic 
or  quick  decision — with  which  he  disbanded  his  army  and 
took  refuge  in  Nottingham  Castle.  The  arrest  of  some  of 
the  barons  showed  how  true  were  his  fears,  for  the  heads 
of  the  French  conspiracy,  Robert  Fitzwalter  and  Eustace 
de  Vesci,  at  once  fled  over  sea  to  Philip.  His  daring  self- 
confidence,  the  skill  of  his  diplomacy,  could  no  longer  hide 
from  John  the  utter  loneliness  of  his  position.  At  war 
with  Rome,  with  France,  with  Scotland,  Ireland  and 
Wales,  at  war  with  the  Church,  he  saw  himself  disarmed 
by  this  sudden  revelation  of  treason  in  the  one  force  left  at 
his  disposal.  With  characteristic  suddenness  he  gave 
way.  He  endeavored  by  remission  of  fines  to  win  back 
his  people.  He  negotiated  eagerly  with  the  Pope,  con- 
sented to  receive  the  Archbishop,  and  promised  to  repay 
the  money  he  had  extorted  from  the  Church. 

But  the  shameless  ingenuity  of  the  King's  temper  was 
seen  in  his  resolve  to  find  in  his  very  humiliation  a  new 
source  of  strength.  If  he  yielded  to  the  Church  he  had  no 
mind  to  yield  to  the  rest  of  his  foes ;  it  was  indeed  in  the 
Pope  who  had  defeated  him  that  he  saw  the  means  of 
baffling  their  efforts.  It  was  Rome  that  formed  the  link 
between  the  varied  elements  of  hostility  which  combined 
against  him.  It  was  Rome  that  gave  its  sanction  to 
Philip's  ambition  and  roused  the  hopes  of  Scotch  and 
Welsh,  Rome  that  called  the  clergy  to  independence  and 
nerved  the  barons  to  resistance.  To  detach  Innocent  by 
submission  from  the  league  which  hemmed  him  in  on 
every  side  was  the  least  part  of  John's  purpose.  He  re- 
solved to  make  Rome  his  ally,  to  turn  its  spiritual  thun- 
ders on  his  foes,  to  use  it  in  breaking  up  the  confederacy 
it  had  formed,  in  crushing  the  baronage,  in  oppressing  the 
clergy,  in  paralyzing — as  Rome  only  could  paralyze — the 
energy  of  the  Primate.  That  greater  issues  even  than 
these  were  involved  in  John's  rapid  change  of  policy  time 
was  to  show;  but  there  is  no  need  to  credit  the  King  with 


244  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III 


the  foresight  that  would  have  discerned  them.  His  quick 
versatile  temper  saw  no  doubt  little  save  the  momentary- 
gain.  But  that  gain  was  immense.  Nor  was  the  price 
as  hard  to  pay  as  it  seems  to  modern  eyes.  The  Pope 
stood  too  high  above  earthly  monarchs,  his  claims,  at  least 
as  Innocent  conceived  and  expressed  them,  were  too  spir- 
tual,  too  remote  from  the  immediate  business  and  interests 
of  the  day,  to  make  the  owning  of  his  suzerainty  any  very 
practical  burden.  John  could  recall  a  time  when  his  father 
was  willing  to  own  the  same  subjection  as  that  which  he 
was  about  to  take  on  himself.  He  could  recall  the  parallel 
allegiance  which  his  brother  had  pledged  to  the  Emperor. 
Shame  indeed  there  must  be  in  any  loss  of  independence, 
but  in  this  less  than  any  and  with  Rome  the  shame  of  sub- 
mission had  already  been  incurred.  But  whatever  were 
the  King's  thoughts  his  act  was  decisive.  On  the  15th  of 
May,  1213,  he  knelt  before  the  legate  Pandulf,  surrendered 
his  kingdom  to  the  Roman  See,  took  it  back  again  as  a 
tributary  vassal,  swore  fealty  and  did  liege  homage  to  the 
Pope. 

In  after-times  men  believed  that  England  thrilled  at  the 
news  with  a  sense  of  national  shame  such  as  she  had  never 
felt  before.  "  He  has  become  the  Pope's  man,"  the  whole 
country  was  said  to  have  murmured ;  "  he  has  forfeited  the 
very  name  of  King ;  from  a  free  man  he  has  degraded  him- 
self into  a  serf."  But  this  was  the  belief  of  a  time  still  to 
come  when  the  rapid  growth  of  national  feeling  which 
this  step  and  its  issues  did  more  than  anything  to  foster 
made  men  look  back  on  the  scene  between  John  and  Pan- 
dulf as  a  national  dishonor.  We  see  little  trace  of  such  a 
feeling  in  the  contemporary  accounts  of  the  time.  All 
seem  rather  to  have  regarded  it  as  a  complete  settlement 
of  the  difficulties  in  which  king  and  kingdom  were  in- 
volved. As  a  political  measure  its  success  was  immediate 
and  complete.  The  French  armj'-  at  once  broke  up  in  im- 
potent rage,  and  when  Philip  turned  on  the  enemy  John 
had  raised  up  t^v  him  in  Flande::^  ^va  hundred  Englifc« 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.    1304—1291.  245 

ships  under  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  fell  upon  the  fleet  which 
accompanied  the  French  army  along  the  coast  and  utterly 
destroyed  it.  The  league  which  John  had  so  long  matured 
at  once  disclosed  itself.  Otto,  reinforcing  his  German 
army  by  the  kniglithood  of  Flanders  and  Boulogne  as  well 
as  by  a  body  of  mercenaries  in  the  pay  of  the  English 
King,  invaded  France  from  the  north.  John  called  on  his 
baronage  to  follow  him  over  sea  for  an  attack  on  Philip 
from  the  South. 

Their  plea  that  he  remained  excommunicate  was  set 
aside  by  the  arrival  of  Langton  and  his  formal  absolution 
of  the  King  on  a  renewal  of  his  coronation  oath  and  a 
pledge  to  put  away  all  evil  customs.  But  the  barons  still 
stood  aloof.  They  would  serve  at  home,  they  said,  but 
they  refused  to  cross  the  sea.  Those  of  the  north  took  a 
more  decided  attitude  of  opposition.  From  this  point  in- 
deed the  northern  barons  begin  to  play  their  part  in  our 
constitutional  history.  Lacies,  Vescies,  Percies,  Stute- 
villes,  Bruces,  houses  such  as  those  of  de  Ros  or  de  Vaux, 
all  had  sprung  to  greatness  on  the  ruins  of  the  Mowbrays 
and  the  great  houses  of  the  Conquest  and  had  done  service 
to  the  Crown  in  its  strife  with  the  older  feudatories.  But 
loyal  as  was  their  tradition  they  were  English  to  the  core ; 
they  had  neither  lands  nor  interest  over  sea,  and  they  now 
declared  themselves  bound  by  no  tenure  to  follow  the  King 
in  foreign  wars.  Furious  at  this  check  to  his  plans  John 
marched  in  arms  northward  to  bring  these  barons  to  sub- 
mission. But  he  had  now  to  reckon  with  a  new  antago- 
nist in  the  Justiciar,  Geoffry  Fitz-Poter.  Geoffry  had 
hitherto  beat  to  the  King's  will ;  but  the  political  sagacity 
which  he  drew  from  fhe  school  of  Henry  the  Second  in 
which  he  had  been  trained  showed  him  the  need  of  con- 
cession, and  his  wealth,  his  wide  kinship,  and  his  experi- 
ence of  affairs  gave  his  interposition  a  decisive  weight. 
He  seized  on  the  political  opportunity  which  was  offered 
by  the  gathering  of  a  Council  at  St.  Alban's  at  the  opening 
of  August  with  the  purpose  of  assessing  the  damages  done 


246  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 


to  the  Church.  Besides  the  bishops  and  barons,  a  reeve 
and  his  four  men  were  summoned  to  this  Council  from 
each  royal  demesne,  no  doubt  simply  as  witnesses  of  the 
sums  due  to  the  plundered  clergy.  Their  presence,  how- 
ever, was  of  great  import.  It  is  the  first  instance  which 
our  history  presents  of  the  summons  of  such  representa- 
tives to  a  national  Council,  and  the  instance  took  fresh 
weight  from  the  great  matters  which  came  to  be  discussed. 
In  the  King's  name  the  Justiciar  promised  good  govern- 
ment for  the  time  to  come,  and  forbade  all  royal  officers 
to  practise  extortion  as  they  prized  life  and  limb.  The 
King's  peace  was  pledged  to  those  who  had  opposed  him 
in  the  past ;  and  observance  of  the  laws  of  Henry  the  First 
was  enjoined  upon  all  within  the  realm. 

But  it  was  not  in  Geoffry  Fitz-Peter  that  English  free- 
dom was  to  find  its  champion  and  the  baronage  their  leader. 
From  the  moment  of  his  landing  in  England  Stephen 
Langton  had  taken  up  the  constitutional  position  of  the 
Primate  in  upholding  the  old  customs  and  rights  of  the 
realm  against  the  personal  despotism  of  the  kings.  As 
Anselm  had  withstood  William  the  Red,  as  Theobald  had 
withstood  Stephen,  so  Langton  prepared  to  withstand  and 
rescue  his  country  from  the  tyranny  of  John.  He  had 
already  forced  him  to  swear  to  observe  the  laws  of  Edward 
the  Confessor,  in  other  words  the  traditional  liberties  of 
the  realm.  When  the  baronage  refused  to  sail  for  Poitou 
he  compelled  the  King  to  deal  with  them  not  by  arms  but 
by  process  of  law.  But  the  work  which  he  now  undertook 
was  far  greater  and  weightier  than  this.  The  pledges  of 
Henry  the  First  had  long  been  forgotten  when  the  Justi- 
ciar brought  them  to  light,  but  Langton  saw  the  vast  im- 
portance of  such  a  precedent.  At  the  close  of  the  month 
he  produced  Henry's  charter  in  a  fresh  gathering  of  barons 
at  St.  Paul's,  and  it  was  at  once  welcomed  as  a  base  for 
the  needed  reform.  From  London  Langton  hastened  to 
the  King,  whom  he  reached  at  Northampton  on  his  way 
to  attack  the  nobles  of  the  north,  and  wrested  from  him 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  24? 

a  promise  to  bring  his  strife  with  them  to  legal  judgment 
before  assailing  them  in  arms.  With  his  allies  gathering 
abroad  John  had  doubtless  no  wish  to  be  entangled  in  a 
long  quarrel  at  home,  and  the  Archbishop's  mediation 
allowed  him  to  withdraw  with  seeming  dignit3^  After  a 
demonstration  therefore  at  Durham  John  marched  hastily 
south  again,  and  reached  London  in  October.  His  Jus- 
ticiar at  once  laid  before  him  the  claims  of  the  Councils  of 
St.  Alban's  and  St.  Paul's;  but  the  death  of  Geoffry  at 
this  juncture  freed  him  from  the  pressure  which  his  min- 
ister was  putting  upon  him.  "  Now,  by  God's  feet,"  cried 
John,  "  I  am  for  the  first  time  King  and  Lord  of  England," 
and  he  entrusted  the  vacant  justiciarship  to  a  Poitevin, 
Peter  des  Roches,  the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  whose  tem- 
per was  in  harmony  with  his  own.  But  the  death  of  Geoffry 
only  called  the  Archbishop  to  the  front,  and  Langton  at 
once  demanded  the  King's  assent  to  the  Charter  of  Henry 
the  First.  In  seizing  on  this  Charter  as  a  basis  for  na- 
tional action,  Langton  showed  a  political  ability  of  the 
highest  order.  The  enthusiasm  with  which  its  recital  was 
welcomed  showed  the  sagacity  with  which  the  Archbishop 
had  chosen  his  ground.  From  that  moment  the  baronage 
was  no  longer  drawn  together  in  secret  conspiracies  by  a 
sense  of  common  wrong  or  a  vague  longing  for  common 
deliverance :  they  were  openly  united  in  a  definite  claim 
of  national  freedom  and  national  law. 

John  could  as  yet  only  me«t  the  claim  by  delay.  His 
policy  had  still  to  wait  for  its  fruits  at  Rome,  his  diplo- 
macy to  reap  its  harvest  in  Flanders,  ere  he  could  deal 
with  England.  From  the  hour  of  his  submission  to  the 
Papacy  his  one  thought  had  been  that  of  vengeance  on  the 
barons  who,  as  he  held,  had  betrayed  him ;  but  vengeance 
was  impossible  till  he  should  return  a  conqueror  from  the 
fields  of  France.  It  was  a  sense  of  this  danger  which 
nerved  the  baronage  to  their  obstinate  refusal  to  follow 
him  over  sea :  but  furious  as  he  was  at  their  resistance, 
the  Archbishop's  interjiosition  condemned  John  still  to 


248  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

wait  for  the  hour  of  his  revenge.  In  the  spring  of  1214 
he  crossed  with  what  forces  he  could  gather  to  Poitou, 
rallied  its  nobles  round  him,  passed  the  Loire  in  triumph, 
and  won  back  again  Angers,  the  home  of  his  race.  At 
the  same  time  Otto  and  the  Count  of  Flanders,  their  Ger- 
man and  Flemish  knighthood  strengthened  by  reinforce- 
ments from  Boulogne  as  well  as  by  a  body  of  English 
troops  under  the  Earl  of  Salisbury,  threatened  France  from 
the  north.  For  the  moment  Philip  seemed  lost :  and  yet 
on  the  fortunes  of  Philip  hung  the  fortunes  of  English  free- 
dom. But  in  this  crisis  of  her  fate,  France  was  true  to 
herself  and  her  King.  From  every  borough  of  Northern 
France  the  townsmen  marched  to  his  rescue,  and  the  vil- 
lage priests  led  their  flocks  to  battle  with  the  Church-ban- 
ners flying  at  their  head.  The  two  armies  met  at  the  close 
of  July  near  the  bridge  of  Bouvines,  between  Lille  and 
Tournay,  and  from  the  first  the  day  went  against  the  allies. 
The  Flemish  knights  Avere  the  first  to  fly ;  then  the  Ger- 
mans in  the  centre  of  the  host  were  crushed  by  the  over- 
whelming numbers  of  the  French ;  last  of  all  the  English 
on  the  right  of  it  were  broken  by  a  fierce  onset  of  the  Bishop 
of  Beauvais,  who  charged  mace  in  hand  and  struck  the 
Earl  of  Salisbury  to  the  ground.  The  news  of  this  com- 
plete overthrow  reached  John  in  the  midst  of  his  triumphs 
in  the  South,  and  scattered  his  hopes  to  the  winds.  He 
was  at  once  deserted  by  the  Poitevin  nobles ;  and  a  hasty 
retreat  alone  enabled  him  to  return  in  October,  baffled  and 
humiliated,  to  his  island  kingdom. 

His  return  forced  on  the  crisis  to  which  events  had  so 
long  been  drifting.  The  victory  at  Bouvines  gave  strength 
to  his  opponents.  The  open  resistance  of  the  northern 
Barons  nerved  the  rest  of  their  order  to  action.  The  great 
houses  who  had  cast  away  their  older  feudal  traditions  for 
a  more  national  policy  were  drawn  by  the  crisis  into  close 
union  with  the  families  which  had  sprung  from  the  min- 
isters and  councillors  of  the  two  Henries.  To  the  first 
group  belonged  such  men  as  Saher  de  Quinci,  the  Earl  of 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.    1304—1291.  249 

Winchester,  Geoffrey  of  Mandeville,  Earl  of  Essex,  the 
Earl  of  Clare,  Fulk  Fitz-Warin,  William  Mallet,  the 
houses  of  Fitz-Alan  and  Gant.  Among  the  second  group 
were  Henry  Bohun  and  Roger  Bigod,  the  Earls  of  Here- 
ford and  Norfolk,  the  younger  William  Marshal  and  Rob- 
ert de  Vere.  Robert  Fitz- Walter,  who  took  the  command 
of  their  united  force,  represented  both  parties  equally,  for 
he  was  sprung  from  the  Norman  house  of  Brionne,  while 
the  Justiciar  of  Henry  the  Second,  Richard  de  Lucy,  had 
been  his  grandfather.  Secretly,  and  on  the  pretext  of  pil- 
grimage, these  nobles  met  at  St.  Edmundsbury,  resolute 
to  bear  no  longer  with  John's  delaj's.  If  he  refused  to 
restore  their  liberties  they  swore  to  make  war  on  him  till 
he  confirmed  them  by  charter  under  the  King's  seal,  and 
they  parted  to  raise  forces  with  the  purpose  of  presenting 
their  demands  at  Christmas.  John,  knowing  nothing  of 
the  coming  storm,  pursued  his  policy  of  winning  over  the 
Church  by  granting  it  freedom  of  election,  while  he  em- 
bittered still  more  the  strife  with  his  nobles  by  demanding 
scutage  from  the  northern  nobles  who  had  refused  to  fol- 
low him  to  Poitou.  But  the  barons  were  now  ready  to 
act,  and  early  in  January  in  the  memorable  year  1215  they 
appeared  in  arms  to  lay,  as  they  had  planned,  their  de- 
mands before  the  King. 

John  was  taken  by  surprise.  He  asked  for  a  truce  till 
Easter-tide,  and  spent  the  interval  in  fevered  efforts  to 
avoid  the  blow.  Again  he  offered  freedom  to  the  Church, 
and  took  vows  as  a  Crusader  against  whom  war  was  a  sac- 
rilege, while  he  called  for  a  general  oath  of  allegiance  and 
fealty  from  the  whole  body  of  his  subjects.  But  month 
after  month  only  showed  the  King  the  uselessness  of  fur- 
ther resistance.  Though  Pandulf  was  with  him,  his  vas- 
salage had  as  yet  brought  little  fruit  in  the  way  of  aid 
from  Rome ;  the  commissioners  whom  he  sent  to  plead  his 
cause  at  the  shire-courts  brought  back  news  that  no  man 
would  help  him  against  the  charter  that  the  barons  claimed ; 
and  his  efforts  to  detach  the  clergy  from  the  league  of  his 


250  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IH. 

opponents  utterly  failed.  The  nation  was  against  the 
King.  Ho  was  far  indeed  from  being  utterly  deserted. 
His  ministers  still  clung  to  him,  men  such  as  Geoffrey  de 
Lucy,  Geoffrey  de  Furnival,  Thomas  Basset,  and  William 
Briwere,  statesmen  trained  in  the  administrative  school  of 
his  father,  and  who,  dissent  as  they  might  from  John's 
mere  oppression,  still  looked  on  the  power  of  the  Crown  as 
the  one  barrier  against  feudal  anarchy ;  and  beside  them 
stood  some  of  the  great  nobles  of  royal  blood,  his  father's 
bastard  Earl  William  of  Salisbury,  his  cousin  Earl  Wil< 
liam  of  Warenne,  and  Henry  Earl  of  Cornwall,  a  grand- 
son of  Henry  the  First.  With  him  too  remained  Ranulf 
Earl  of  Chester,  and  the  wisest  and  noblest  of  the  barons, 
William  Marshal  the  elder  Earl  of  Pembroke.  William 
Marshal  had  shared  in  the  rising  of  the  younger  Henry 
against  Henry  the  Second,  and  stood  by  him  as  he  died ; 
he  had  shared  in  the  overthrow  of  William  Longchamp 
and  in  the  outlawry  of  John.  He  was  now  an  old  man, 
firm,  as  we  shall  see  in  his  after-course,  to  recall  the  gov- 
ernment to  the  path  of  freedom  and  law,  but  shrinking 
from  a  strife  which  might  bring  back  the  anarchy  of  Ste- 
phen's day,  and  looking  for  reforms  rather  in  the  bring- 
ing constitutional  pressure  to  bear  upon  the  King  than  in 
forcing  them  from  him  by  arms. 

But  cling  as  such  men  might  to  John,  they  clung  to 
him  rather  as  mediators  than  adherents.  Their  sympa- 
thies went  with  the  demands  of  the  barons  when  the  delay 
which  had  been  granted  was  over  and  the  nobles  again 
gathered  in  arms  at  Brackley  in  ISTorthamptonshire  to  lay 
their  claims  before  the  King.  Nothing  marks  more 
strongly  the  absolutely  despotic  idea  of  his  sovereignty 
which  John  had  formed  than  the  passionate  surprise  which 
breaks  out  in  his  reply.  "  Why  do  they  not  ask  for  my 
kingdom?"  he  cried,  "  I  will  never  grant  such  liberties 
as  will  make  me  a  slave !"  The  imperialist  theories  of  the 
lawyers  of  his  father's  court  had  done  their  work.  Held 
at  bay  by  the  practical  sense  of  Henry,  they  had  told  on 


KIMG  JOHN 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.    1204—1291.  251 

I.  II  ■  -I.I..  I  ..  ■—  --...I..!  ...  ■  .III .^ 

the  more  headstroncr  nature  of  his  sons.  Richard  and 
John  both  held  with  Glanvill  that  the  will  of  the  prince 
was  the  law  of  the  land  ;  and  to  fetter  that  will  by  the  cus- 
toms and  franchises  which  were  embodied  in  the  barons' 
claims  seemed  to  John  a  monstrous  usurpation  of  his  riglits. 
But  no  imperialist  theories  had  touched  the  minds  of  his 
people.  The  country  rose  as  one  man  at  his  refusal.  At 
the  close  of  May  London  threw  open  her  gates  to  the  forces 
of  the  barons,  now  arraj^ed  under  Robert  Fitz- Walter  as 
"  Marshal  of  the  Army  of  God  and  Holy  Church."  Exeter 
and  Lincoln  followed  the  example  of  the  capital ;  promises 
of  aid  came  from  Scotland  and  Wales ;  the  northern  barons 
marched  hastily  under  Eustace  de  Vesci  to  join  their  com 
rades  in  London.  Even  the  nobles  who  had  as  yet  clung 
to  the  King,  but  whose  hopes  of  conciliation  were  blasted 
by  his  obstinacy,  yielded  at  last  to  the  summons  of  the 
"Army  of  God."  Pandulf  indeed  and  Archbishop  Lang- 
ton  still  remained  with  John,  but  they  counselled,  as  Earl 
Ranulf  and  William  Marshal  counselled,  his  acceptance  of 
the  Charter.  None  in  fact  counselled  its  rejection  save 
his  new  Justiciar,  the  Poitevin  Peter  des  Roches,  and  other 
foreigners  who  knew  the  barons  purposed  driving  them 
from  the  land.  But  even  the  number  of  these  was  small ; 
there  was  a  moment  when  John  found  himself  with  but 
seven  knights  at  his  back  and  before  him  a  nation  in  arms. 
Quick  as  he  was,  he  had  been  taken  utterly  by  surprise. 
It  was  in  vain  that  in  the  short  respite  he  had  gained  from 
Christmas  to  Easter  he  had  summoned  mercenaries  to  his 
aid  and  appealed  to  his  new  suzerain,  the  Pope.  Sum- 
mons and  appeal  were  alike  too  late.  Nursing  wrath  in 
his  heart,  John  bowed  to  necessity  and  called  the  barons 
to  a  conference  on  an  island  in  the  Thames,  between  Wind- 
sor and  Staines,  near  a  marshj'  meadow  by  the  riverside, 
the  meadow  of  Runnymede.  The  King  encamped  on  one 
bank  of  the  river,  the  barons  covered  the  flat  of  Runny- 
mede on  the  other.  Their  delegates  met  on  the  15th  of 
July  in  the  island  between  them,  but  the  negotiations  wert 


252  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IH. 

■  '  ■  ~—  '    '  ■  I.  ■  ■  ■  —  II.-. —  "     —  ■  ■  ■  ■        ^ 

a  mere  cloak  to  cover  John's  purpose  of  unconditional  sub- 
mission. The  Great  Charter  was  discussed  and  agreed  to 
in  a  single  day. 

Copies  of  it  were  made  and  sent  for  preservation  to  the 
cathedrals  and  churches,  and  one  copy  may  still  be  seen  in 
the  British  Museum,  injured  by  age  and  fire,  but  with  the 
royal  seal  still  hanging  from  the  brown,  shrivelled  parch- 
ment. It  is  impossible  to  gaze  without  reverence  on  the 
earliest  monument  of  English  freedom  which  we  can  see 
with  our  own  eyes  and  touch  with  our  own  hands,  the 
great  Charter  to  which  from  age  to  age  men  have  looked 
back  as  the  groundwork  of  English  liberty.  But  in  itself 
the  Charter  was  no  novelty,  nor  did  it  claim  to  establish 
any  new  constitutional  principles.  The  Charter  of  Henry 
the  First  formed  the  basis  of  the  whole,  and  the  additions 
to  it  are  for  the  most  part  formal  recognitions  of  the  judi- 
cial and  administrative  changes  introduced  by  Henry  the 
Second.  What  was  new  in  it  was  its  origin.  In  form, 
like  the  Charter  on  which  it  was  based,  it  was  nothing  but 
a  royal  grant.  In  actual  fact  it  was  a  treaty  between  the 
whole  English  people  and  its  king.  In  it  England  found 
itself  for  the  first  time  since  the  Conquest  a  nation  bound 
together  by  common  national  interests,  by  a  common  na- 
tional sympathy.  In  words  which  almost  close  the  Char- 
ter, the  "  community  of  the  whole  land"  is  recognized  as 
the  great  body  from  which  the  restraining  power  of  the 
baronage  takes  its  validity.  There  is  no  distinction  of 
blood  or  class,  of  Norman  or  not  Norman,  of  noble  or  not 
noble.  All  are  recognized  as  Englishmen,  the  rights  of 
all  are  owned  as  English  rights.  Bishops  and  nobles 
claimed  and  secured  at  Runnymede  the  rights  not  of  baron 
and  churchman  only  but  those  of  freeholder  and  merchant, 
of  townsman  and  villein.  The  provisions  against  wrong 
and  extortion  which  the  barons  drew  up  as  against  the 
King  for  themselves  they  drew  up  as  against  themselves 
for  their  tenants.  Based  too  as  it  professed  to  be  on  Henry's 
Charter  it  was  far  from  being  a  mere  copy  of  what  had 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  253 

gone  before.  The  vague  expressions  of  the  old  Charter 
were  now  exchanged  for  precise  and  elaborate  provisions. 
The  bonds  of  unwritten  custom  which  the  older  grant  did 
little  more  than  recognize  had  proved  too  weak  to  hold  the 
Angevins;  and  the  baronage  set  them  aside  for  the  re- 
straints of  written  and  defined  law.  It  is  in  this  way  that 
the  Great  Charter  marks  the  transition  from  the  age  of 
traditional  rights,  preserved  in  the  nation's  memory  and 
officially  declared  by  the  Primate,  to  the  age  of  written  leg- 
islation, of  Parliaments  and  Statutes,  which  was  to  come. 
Its  opening  indeed  is  in  general  terms.  The  Church 
had  shown  its  power  of  self-defence  in  the  struggle  over 
the  interdict,  and  the  clause  which  recognized  its  rights 
alone  retained  the  older  and  general  form.  But  all  vague- 
ness c«ases  when  the  Charter  passes  on  to  deal  with  the 
rights  of  Englishmen  at  large,  their  right  to  justice,  to  se- 
curity of  person  and  property,  to  good  government.  "  No 
freeman,"  ran  a  memorable  article  that  lies  at  the  base  of 
our  whole  judicial  system,  "  shall  be  seized  or  imprisoned, 
or  dispossessed,  or  outlawed,  or  in  any  way  brought  to 
ruin :  we  will  not  go  against  any  man  nor  send  against 
him,  save  by  legal  judgment  of  his  peers  or  by  the  law  of 
the  land."  "To  no  man  will  we  sell,"  runs  another,  "or 
deny,  or  delay,  right  or  justice."  The  great  reforms  of 
the  past  reigns  were  now  formally  recognized;  judges  of 
assize  were  to  hold  their  circuits  four  times  in  the  year, 
and  the  King's  Court  was  no  longer  to  follow  the  King  in 
his  wanderings  over  the  realm  but  to  sit  in  a  fixed  place. 
But  the  denial  of  justice  under  John  was  a  small  danger 
compared  with  the  lawless  exactions  both  of  himself  and 
his  predecessor.  Richard  had  increased  the  amount  of 
the  scutage  which  Henry  the  Second  had  introduced,  and 
applied  it  to  raise  funds  for  his  ransom.  He  had  restored 
the  Danegeld,  or  land-tax,  so  often  abolished,  under  the 
new  name  of  "  carucage,"  had  seized  the  wool  of  the  Cister- 
cians and  the  plate  of  the  churches,  and  rated  movables  as 
well  as  land.     John  had  again  raised  the  rate  of  scutage, 


254  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE,     [Book  IIL 

and  imposed  aids,  flues,  and  ransoms  at  his  pleasure  with- 
out counsel  of  the  baronage.  The  Great  Charter  met  this 
abuse  by  a  provision  on  which  our  constitutional  system 
rests.  "  No  scutage  or  aid  [other  than  the  three  custom- 
ary feudal  aids]  shall  be  imposed  in  our  realm  save  by  the 
common  council  of  the  realm ;"  and  to  this  Great  Council 
it  was  provided  that  prelates  and  the  greater  barons  should 
be  summoned  by  special  writ  and  all  tenants  in  chief 
through  the  sheriffs  and  bailiffs  at  least  forty  days  before. 
The  provision  defined  what  had  probably  been  the  com- 
mon usage  of  the  realm ;  but  the  definition  turned  it  into 
a  national  right,  a  right  so  momentous  that  on  it  rests  our 
whole  Parliamentary  life.  Even  the  baronage  seem  to 
have  been  startled  when  they  realized  the  extent  of  their 
claim ;  and  the  provision  was  dropped  from  the  later  issue 
of  the  Charter  at  the  outset  of  the  next  reign.  But  the 
clause  brought  home  to  the  nation  at  large  their  possession 
of  a  right  which  became  dearer  as  years  went  by.  More 
and  more  clearly  the  nation  discovered  that  in  these  sim- 
ple words  lay  the  secret  of  political  power.  It  was  the 
right  of  self -taxation  that  England  fought  for  under  Earl 
Simon  as  she  fought  for  it  under  Hampden.  It  was  the 
establishment  of  this  right  which  established  English  free- 
dom. 

The  rights  which  the  barons  claimed  for  themselves  they 
claimed  for  the  nation  at  large.  The  boon  of  free  and  un- 
bought  justice  was  a  boon  for  all,  but  a  special  provision 
protected  the  poor.  The  forfeiture  of  the  freeman  on  con- 
viction of  felony  was  never  to  include  his  tenement,  or  that 
of  the  merchant  his  wares,  or  that  of  the  countryman,  as 
Henry  the  Second  had  long  since  ordered,  his  wain.  The 
means  of  actual  livelihood  were  to  be  left  even  to  the  worst. 
The  seizure  of  provisions,  the  exaction  of  forced  labor,  by 
royal  officers  was  forbidden ;  and  the  abuses  of  the  forest 
system  were  checked  by  a  clause  which  disafforested  all 
forests  made  in  John's  reign.  The  under-tenants  were 
protected  against  all  lawless  exactions  of  their  lords  in 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1391.  255 


precisely  the  same  terms  as  these  were  protected  against 
the  lawless  exactions  of  the  Crown.  The  towns  were  se- 
cured in  the  enjoyment  of  their  municipal  privileges,  their 
freedom  from  arbitrary  taxation,  their  rights  of  justice, 
of  comraon  deliberation,  of  regulation  of  trade.  "  Let  the 
city  of  London  have  all  its  old  liberties  and  its  free  cus- 
toms, as  well  by  land  as  by  water.  Besides  this,  we  will 
and  grant  that  all  other  cities,  and  boroughs,  and  towns, 
and  ports,  have  all  their  liberties  and  free  customs."  The 
influence  of  the  trading  class  is  seen  in  two  other  enact- 
ments by  which  freedom  of  journeying  and  trade  was  se- 
cured to  foreign  merchants  and  an  uniformity  of  weights 
and  measures  was  ordered  to  be  enforced  throughout  the 
realm. 

There  remained  only  one  question,  attd  that  the  most 
difficult  of  all :  the  question  how  to  secure  this  order  which 
tbe  Charter  established  in  the  actual  government  of  the 
realm.  It  was  easy  to  sweep  away  the  immediate  abuses ; 
the  hostages  were  restored  to  their  homes,  the  foreigners 
"Danished  by  a  clause  in  the  Charter  from  the  country. 
But  it  was  less  easy  to  provide  means  for  the  control  of  a 
King  whom  no  man  could  trust.  By  the  treaty  as  settled 
at  Runnymede  a  council  of  twenty-four  barons  were  to  be 
chosen  from  the  general  body  of  their  order  to  enforce  on 
John  the  observance  of  the  Charter,  with  the  right  of  de- 
claring war  on  the  King  should  its  provisions  be  infringed, 
and  it  was  provided  that  the  Charter  should  not  only  be 
published  throughout  the  whole  country  but  sworn  to  at 
every  hundred-mote  and  town-mote  by  order  from  the 
King.  "  They  have  given  me  four-and-twenty  over-kings," 
cried  John  in  a  burst  of  fury,  flinging  himself  on  the  floor 
and  gnawing  sticks  and  straw  in  his  impotent  rage.  But 
the  rage  soon  passed  into  the  subtle  policy  of  which  he  was 
a  master.  After  a  few  days  he  left  Windsor;  and  lin- 
gered for  months  along  the  southern  shore,  waiting  for 
news  of  the  aid  he  had  solicited  from  Rome  and  from  the 
Continent.     It  was  not  without  definite  purpose  that  he 


256  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

had  become  the  vassal  of  the  Papacy.  While  Innocent- 
was  dreaming  of  a  vast  Christian  Empire  with  the  Pope 
at  its  head  to  enforce  justice  and  religion  on  his  under- 
kings,  John  believed  that  the  Papal  protection  would 
enable  him  to  rule  as  tyrannically  as  he  would.  The  thun- 
ders of  the  Papacy  were  to  be  ever  at  hand  for  his  protec- 
tion, as  the  armies  of  England  are  at  hand  to  protect  the 
vileness  and  oppression  of  a  Turkish  Sultan  or  a  Nizam 
of  Hyderabad.  His  envoys  were  already  at  Rome,  plead- 
ing for  a  condemnation  of  the  Charter.  The  after-action 
of  the  Papacy  shows  that  Innocent  was  moved  by  no  hos- 
tility to  English  freedom.  But  he  was  indignant  that  a 
matter  which  might  have  been  brought  before  his  court 
of  appeal  as  over-lord  should  have  been  dealt  with  by  armed 
revolt,  and  in  this  crisis  both  his  imperious  pride  and  the 
legal  tendency  of  his  mind  swayed  him  to  the  side  of  the 
King  who  submitted  to  his  justice.  He  annulled  the  Grep;*, 
Charter  by  a  bull  in  August,  and  at  the  close  of  the  year 
excommunicated  the  barons. 

His  suspension  of  Stephen  Langton  from  the  exercise 
of  his  office  as  Primate  was  a  more  fatal  blow.  Langton 
hurried  to  Rome,  and  his  absence  left  the  barons  without 
a  head  at  a  moment  when  the  very  success  of  their  efforts 
Was  dividing  them.  Their  forces  were  already  disorgan- 
ized when  autumn  brought  a  host  of  foreign  soldiers  from 
over  sea  to  the  King's  standard.  After  starving  Roches- 
ter into  submission  John  found  himself  strong  enough  to 
march  ravaging  through  the  Midland  and  Northern  coun- 
ties, while  his  mercenaries  spread  like  locusts  over  the 
whole  face  of  the  land.  From  Berwick  the  King  turned 
back  triumphant  to  coop  up  his  enemies  in  London,  while 
fresh  Papal  excommunications  fell  on  the  barons  and  the 
city.  But  the  burghers  set  Innocent  at  defiance.  "  The 
ordering  of  secular  matters  appertaineth  not  to  the  Pope," 
they  said,  in  words  that  seem  like  mutterings  of  the  com- 
ing Lollardism ;  and  at  the  advice  of  Simon  Langton,  the 
Archbishop's  brother,  bells  swung  out  and  mass  was  cele 


Chap.  1.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  257 

brated  as  before.  Success  however  was  impossible  for  the 
undisciplined  militia  of  the  country  and  the  towns  against 
the  trained  forces  of  the  King,  and  despair  drove  the  barons 
to  listen  to  Fitz-Walter  and  the  French  party  in  their 
ranks,  and  to  seek  aid  from  over  sea.  Philip  had  long 
been  waiting  the  opportunity  for  his  revenge  upon  John. 
In  the  April  of  1216  his  son  Lewis  accepted  the  crown  in 
spite  of  Innocent's  excommunications,  and  landed  soon 
after  in  Kent  with  a  considerable  force.  As  the  barons 
had  foreseen,  the  French  mercenaries  who  constituted 
John's  host  refused  to  fight  against  the  French  sovereign 
and  the  whole  aspect  of  affairs  was  suddenly  reversed. 
Deserted  by  the  bulk  of  his  troops,  the  King  was  forced 
to  fall  rapidly  back  on  the  Welsh  Marches,  while  his  rival 
entered  London  and  received  the  submission  of  the  larger 
part  of  England.  Only  Dover  held  out  obstinately  against 
Lewis.  By  a  series  of  rapid  marches  John  succeeded  in 
distracting  the  plans  of  the  barons  and  in  relieving  Lin- 
coln ;  then  after  a  short  stay  at  Lynn  he  crossed  the  Wash 
in  a  fresh  movement  to  the  north.  In  crossing,  however, 
his  army  was  surprised  by  the  tide,  and  his  baggage  with 
the  royal  treasures  washed  away.  Fever  seized  the  baffled 
tyrant  as  he  reached  the  Abbey  of  Swineshead,  his  sick- 
ness was  inflamed  by  a  gluttonous  debauch,  and  on  the 
19th  of  October  John  breathed  his  last  at  Newark. 
Vol.  I.— 17 


CHAPTER  11. 

HENRY    TUE    THIKD. 
1316—1232. 

The  death  of  John  changed  the  whole  face  of  English 
affairs.  His  son,  Henry  of  Winchester,  was  but  nine 
years  old,  and  the  j)ity  which  was  stirred  by  the  child's 
helplessness  was  ai(U.'d  by  a  sense  of  injustice  in  burden- 
ing him  with  the  iniquity  of  his  father.  At  his  death 
John  had  driven  from  iiis  side  even  tlie  most  loyal  of  his 
barons;  but  William  Marshal  had  clung  to  him  to  the 
last,  and  with  him  was  Gualo,  the  Legate  of  Innocent's 
successor,  Honorius  the  Third.  The  position  of  Gualo  as 
representative  of  the  Papal  over-lord  of  the  realm  was  of 
the  highest  importance,  and  his  action  showed  the  real  at- 
titude of  Rome  toward  English  freedom.  The  boy-king 
was  hardly  crowned  at  Gloucester  when  Legate  and  Earl 
issued  in  his  name  the  very  Charter  against  which  his 
father  had  died  fighting.  Only  the  clauses  which  regulated 
taxation  and  the  summoning  of  parliament  were  as  yet  de- 
clared to  be  suspended.  The  choice  of  William  Marshal 
as  "  governor  of  King  and  kingdom"  gave  weight  to  this 
step ;  and  its  effect  Avas  seen  when  the  contest  was  renewed 
in  1217.  Lewis  was  at  first  successful  in  the  eastern  coun- 
ties, but  the  political  reaction  was  aided  by  jealousies 
which  broke  out  between  the  English  and  French  nobles 
in  his  force,  and  the  first  drew  gradually  away  from  him. 
So  general  was  the  defection  that  at  the  opening  of  sum- 
mer William  Marshal  felt  himself  strong  enough  for  a  blow 
at  his  foes.  Lewis  himself  was  investing  Dover,  and  a  joint 
army  of  French  and  English  barons  under  the  Count  of 
Perche  and   Robert  Fitz- Walter  was  besieging  Lincoln, 


Chap.  2.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  259 

when  gathering  troops  rapidly  from  the  royal  castles  the 
regent  marched  to  the  relief  of  the  latter  town.  Cooped 
up  in  its  narrow  streets  and  attacked  at  once  by  the  Earl 
and  the  garrison,  the  barons  fled  in  utter  rout ;  the  Count 
of  Perche  fell  on  the  field,  Robert  Fitz-Walter  was  taken 
prisoner.  Lewis  at  once  retreated  on  London  and  called 
for  aid  from  France.  But  a  more  terrible  defeat  crushed 
his  remaining  hopes.  A  small  English  fleet  which  set  sail 
from  Dover  under  Hubert  de  Burgh  fell  boldly  on  the  re- 
inforcements which  were  crossing  under  escort  of  Eustace 
the  Monk,  a  well-known  freebooter  of  the  Channel.  Some 
incidents  of  the  fight  light  up  for  us  the  naval  warfare  of 
the  time.  From  the  decks  of  the  English  vessels  bowmen 
poured  their  arrows  into  the  crowded  transports,  others 
hurled  quicklime  into  their  enemies'  faces,  while  the  more 
active  vessels  crashed  with  their  armed  prows  into  the  sides 
of  the  French  ships.  The  skill  of  the  mariners  of  the  Cinque 
Ports  turned  the  day  against  the  larger  forces  of  their  op- 
ponents, and  the  fleet  of  Eustace  was  utterly  destroyed. 
The  royal  army  at  once  closed  upon  London,  but  resistance 
was  really  at  an  end.  By  a  treaty  concluded  at  Lambeth 
in  September,  Lewis  promised  to  withdraw  from  England 
on  payment  of  a  sum  which  he  claimed  as  debt;  his  ad- 
herents were  restored  to  their  possessions,  the  liberties  of 
London  and  other  towns  confirmed,  and  the  prisoners  on 
either  side  set  at  liberty.  A  fresh  issue  of  the  Charter, 
though  in  its  modified  form,  proclaimed  yet  more  clearly 
the  temper  and  policy  of  the  Earl  Marshal. 

His  death  at  the  opening  of  1219,  after  a  year  spent  in 
giving  order  to  the  realm,  brought  no  change  in  the  sys- 
tem he  had  adopted.  The  control  of  affairs  passed  into 
the  hands  of  a  new  legate,  Pandulf,  of  Stephen  Langton 
who  had  just  returned  forgiven  from  Rome,  and  of  the 
Justiciar,  Hubert  de  Burgh.  It  was  a  time  of  transition, 
and  the  temper  of  the  Justiciar  was  eminently  transitional. 
Bred  in  the  school  of  Henry  the  Second,  Hubert  had  little 
sympathy  with  national  freedom,  and  though  resolute  to 


260  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


maintain  the  Charter  he  can  have  had  small  love  for  it ; 
his  conception  of  good  government,  like  that  of  his  mas- 
ter, lay  in  a  wise  personal  administration,  in  the  preser- 
vation of  order  and  law.     But  he  combined  with  this  a 
thoroughly  English  desire  for  national  independence,  a 
hatred  of  foreigners,  and  a  reluctance  to  waste  English 
blood  and  treasure  in  Continental  struggles.     Able  as  he 
proved  himself,  his  task  was  one  of  no  common  difficulty. 
He  was  hampered  by  the  constant  interference  of  Rome. 
A  Papal  legate  resided  at  the  English  court,  and  claimed 
a  share  in  the  administration  of  the  realm  as  the  represent- 
ative of  its  over-lord  and  as  guardian  of  the  young  sover- 
eign.    A  foreign  party  too  had  still  a  footing  in  the  king- 
dom, for  William  Marshal  had  been  unable  to  rid  himself 
of  men  like  Peter  des  Roches  or  Faukes  de  Breaute,  who 
had  fought  on  the  royal  side  in  the  struggle  against  Lewis. 
Hubert  had  to  deal  too  with  the  anarchy  which  that  strug- 
gle left  behind  it.     From  the  time  of  the  Conquest  the  cen- 
tre of  England  had  been  covered  with  the  domains  of  great 
houses,  whose  longings  were  for  feudal  independence  and 
whose  spirit  of  revolt  had  been  held  in  check  partly  by  the 
stern  rule  of  the  Kings  and  partly  by  the  rise  of  a  baron- 
age sprung  from  the  Court  and  settled  for  the  most  part 
in  the  North.     The  oppression  of  John  united  both  the 
earlier  and  these  newer  houses  in  the  struggle  for  the  Char- 
ter.    But  the  character  of  each  remained  unchanged,  and 
the  close  of  the  struggle  saw  the  feudal  party  break  out  in 
their  old  lawlessness  and  defiance  of  the  Crown. 

For  a  time  the  anarchy  of  Stephen's  days  seem  to  re- 
vive. But  the  Justiciar  was  resolute  to  crush  it,  and  he 
was  backed  by  the  strenuous  efforts  of  Stephen  Langton. 
A  new  and  solemn  coronation  of  the  young  King  in  1220 
was  followed  by  a  demand  for  the  restoration  of  the  royal 
castles  which  had  been  seized  by  the  barons  and  foreign- 
ers. The  Earl  of  Chester,  the  head  of  the  feudal  baron- 
age, though  he  rose  m  armed  rebellion,  quailed  before  tba 
march  of  Hubert  and  the  Primate's  threats  of  excommuni- 


Chap.  2.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204-1291.  261 

cation.  A  more  formidable  foe  remained  in  the  French- 
man, Faukes  de  Breaute,  the  sheriff  of  six  counties,  with 
six  royal  castles  in  his  hands,  and  allied  both  with  the  rebel 
barons  and  Llewelyn  of  Wales.  But  in  1224  his  castle  of 
Bedford^  was  besieged  for  two  months ;  and  on  its  surren- 
der the  stern  justice  of  Hubert  hung  the  twenty-four 
knights  and  their  retainers  who  formed  the  garrison  be- 
fore its  walls.  The  blow  was  effectual ;  the  royal  castles 
were  surrendered  by  the  barons,  and  the  land  was  once' 
more  at  peace.  Freed  from  foreign  soldiery,  the  country 
was  freed  also  from  the  presence  of  the  foreign  legate. 
Langton  wrested  a  promise  from  Rome  that  so  long  as 
he  lived  no  future  legate  should  be  sent  to  England,  and 
with  Pandulf's  resignation  in  1221  the  direct  interference 
of  the  Papacy  in  the  government  of  the  realm  came  to  an 
end.  But  even  these  services  of  the  Primate  were  small 
compared  with  his  services  to  English  freedom.  Through- 
out his  life  the  Charter  was  the  first  object  of  his  care. 
The  omission  of  the  articles  which  restricted  the  royal 
power  over  taxation  in  the  Charter  which  was  published 
at  Henry's  accession  in  1216  was  doubtless  due  to  the 
Archbishop's  absence  and  disgrace  at  Rome.  The  sup- 
pression of  disorder  seems  to  have  revived  the  older  spirit 
of  resistance  among  the  royal  ministers ;  for  when  Lang- 
ton  demanded  a  fresh  confirmation  of  the  Charter  in  Par- 
liament at  London  William  Brewer,  one  of  the  King's 
councillors,  protested  that  it  had  been  extorted  by  force 
and  was  without  legal  validity.  "  If  you  loved  the  King, 
William,"  the  Primate  burst  out  in  anger,  "you  would 
not  throw  a  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  the  peace  of  the 
realm."  The  young  King  was  cowed  by  the  Archbishop's 
wrath,  and  promised  observance  of  the  Charter.  But  it 
may  have  been  their  consciousness  of  such  a  temper  among 
the  royal  councillors  that  made  Langton  and  the  baron- 
age demand  two  years  later  a  fresh  promulgation  of  the 
Charter  as  the  price  of  a  subsidy,  and  Henry's  assent 
established   the   principle,    so   fruitful    of    constitutional 


262  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

results,  that  redress  of  wrongs  precedes  a  grant  to  the 
Crown. 

These  repeated  sanctions  of  the  Charter  and  the  govern- 
ment of  the  reahn  year  after  year  in  accordance  with  its 
provisions  were  gradually  bringing  the  new  freedom  home 
to  the  mass  of  Englishmen.  But  the  sense  of  liberty  was 
at  this  time  quickened  and  intensified  by  a  religious  move- 
ment which  stirred  English  society  to  its  depths.  Never 
had  the  priesthood  wielded  such  boundless  power  over 
Christendom  as  in  the  days  of  Innocent  the  Third  and  his 
immediate  successors.  But  its  religious  hold  on  the  peo- 
ple was  loosening  day  by  day.  The  old  reverence  for  the 
Papacy  was  fading  away  before  the  universal  resentment 
at  its  political  ambition,  its  lavish  use  of  interdict  and  ex- 
communication for  purely  secular  ends,  its  degradation  of 
the  most  sacred  sentences  into  means  of  financial  extor- 
tion. In  Italy  the  struggle  that  was  opening  between 
Rome  and  Frederick  the  Second  disclosed  a  spirit  of  scep- 
ticism which  among  the  Epicurean  poets  of  Florence  de- 
nied the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  attacked  the  very 
foundations  of  the  faith  itself.  In  Southern  Gaul,  Langue- 
doc  and  Provence  had  embraced  the  heresy  of  the  Albi- 
genses  and  thrown  off  all  allegiance  to  the  Papacy.  Even 
in  England,  though  there  were  no  signs  as  yet  of  religious 
revolt,  and  though  the  political  action  of  Rome  had  been 
in  the  main  on  the  side  of  freedom,  there  was  a  spirit  of 
resistance  to  its  interference  with  national  concerns  which 
broke  out  in  the  struggle  against  John.  "  The  Pope  has 
no  part  in  secular  matters,"  had  been  the  reply  of  London 
to  the  interdict  of  Honorius.  And  within  the  English 
Church  itself  there  was  much  to  call  for  reform.  Its  atti- 
tude in  the  strife  for  the  Charter  as  well  as  the  after- work 
of  the  Primate  had  made  it  more  popular  than  ever;  but 
its  spiritual  energy  was  less  than  its  political.  The  disuse 
of  preaching,  the  decline  of  the  monastic  orders  into  rich 
landowners,  the  non-residence  and  ignorance  of  the  parish- 
priests,  lowered  the  religious  influence  of  the  clergy.     The 


Chap.  2.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  263 


abuses  of  the  time  foiled  even  the  energy  of  such  men  as 
Bishop  Grosseteste  of  Lincoln.  His  constitutions  forbid 
the  clergy  to  haunt  taverns,  to  gamble,  to  share  in  drink- 
ing bouts,  to  mix  in  the  riot  and  debauchery  of  the  life  of 
the  baronage.  But  such  prohibitions  witness  to  the  prev- 
alence of  the  evils  they  denounce.  Bishops  and  deans 
were  still  withdrawn  from  their  ecclesiastical  duties  to  act 
as  ministers,  judges,  or  ambassadors.  Benefices  were 
heaped  in  hundreds  at  a  time  on  royal  favorites  like  John 
Mansel.  Abbeys  absorbed  the  tithes  of  parishes  and  then 
served  them  by  half-starved  vicars,  while  exemptions  pur- 
chased from  Rome  shielded  the  scandalous  lives  of  canons 
and  monks  from  all  episcopal  discipline.  And  behind  all 
this  was  a  group  of  secular  statesmen  and  scholars,  the 
successors  of  such  critics  as  Walter  Map,  waging  indeed 
no  open  warfare  with  the  Church,  but  noting  with  bitter 
sarcasm  its  abuses  and  its  faults. 

To  bring  the  world  back  again  within  the  pale  of  the 
Church  was  the  aim  of  two  religious  orders  which  sprang 
suddenly  to  life  at  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
The  zeal  of  the  Spaniard  Dominic  was  roused  at  the  sight 
of  the  lordly  prelates  who  sought  by  fire  and  sword  to  win 
the  Albigensian  heretics  to  the  faith.  "Zeal,"  he  cried, 
"  must  be  met  by  zeal,  lowliness  by  lowliness,  false  sanc- 
tity by  real  sanctity,  preaching  lies  by  preaching  truth," 
His  fieiy  ardor  and  rigid  orthodoxy  were  seconded  by  the 
mystical  piety,  the  imaginative  enthusiasm  of  Francis  of 
Assisi.  The  life  of  Francis  falls  like  a  stream  of  tender 
light  across  the  darkness  of  the  time.  In  the  frescoes  of 
Giotto  or  the  verse  of  Dante  we  see  him  take  Poverty  for 
his  bride.  He  strips  himself  of  all,  he  flings  his  very 
clothes  at  his  father's  feet,  that  he  may  be  one  with  Nature 
and  God.  His  passionate  verse  claims  the  moon  for  his 
sister  and  the  sun  for  his  brother,  he  calls  on  his  brother 
the  Wind,  and  his  sister  the  Water.  His  last  faint  cry 
was  a  "  Welcome,  Sister  Death !"  Strangely  as  the  two 
men  differed  from  each  other,  their  aim  was  tho  sanio — to 


2G4  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

convert  the  heathen,  to  extirpate  heresy,  to  reconcile 
knowledge  with  orthodoxy,  above  all  to  carry  the  Gospel 
to  the  poor.  The  work  was  to  be  done  by  an  utter  reversal 
of  the  older  monasticism,  by  seeking  personal  salvation  in 
effort  for  the  salvation  of  their  fellow-men,  by  exchanging 
the  solitary  of  the  cloister  for  the  preacher,  the  monk  for 
the  "  brother"  or  friar.  To  force  the  new  "  brethren"  into 
entire  dependence  on  those  among  whom  they  labored  their 
vow  of  Poverty  was  turned  into  a  stern  reality ;  the  "  Beg- 
ging Friars"  were  to  subsist  solely  on  alms,  they  might 
possess  neither  money  nor  lands,  the  very  houses  in  which 
they  lived  were  to  be  held  in  trust  for  them  by  others. 
The  tide  of  popular  enthusiasm  which  welcomed  their  ap- 
pearance swept  before  it  the  reluctance  of  Rome,  the 
jealousy  of  the  older  orders,  the  opposition  of  the  parochial 
priesthood.  Thousands  of  brethren  gathered  in  a  few 
years  round  Francis  and  Dominic;  and  the  begging 
preachers,  clad  in  coarse  frock  of  serge  with  a  girdle  of 
rope  round  their  waist,  wandered  barefooted  as  missiona- 
ries over  Asia,  battled  with  heresy  in  Italy  and  Gaul,  lec- 
tured in  the  Universities,  and  preached  and  toiled  among 
the  poor. 

To  the  towns  especially  the  coming  of  the  Friars  was  a 
religious  revolution.  They  had  been  left  for  the  most  part 
to  the  worst  and  most  ignorant  of  the  clergy,  the  mass- 
priest,  whose  sole  subsistence  lay  in  his  fees.  Burgher 
and  artisan  were  left  to  spell  out  what  religious  instruction 
they  might  from  the  gorgeous  ceremonies  of  the  Church's 
ritual  or  the  scriptural  pictures  and  sculptures  which  were 
graven  on  the  walls  of  its  minsters.  We  can  hardly 
wonder  at  the  burst  of  enthusiasm  wdiich  welcomed  the 
itinerant  preacher  whose  fervid  appeal,  coarse  wit,  and 
familiar  story  brought  religion  into  the  fair  and  the  mar- 
ket place.  In  England,  where  the  Black  Friars  of  Domi- 
nic arrived  in  1231,  the  Gray  Friars  of  Francis  in  1224, 
both  were  received  with  the  same  delight.  As  the  older 
orders  had  chosen  the  country,  the  Friars  chose  the  town. 


Chap.  2.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  265 

They  had  hardly  landed  at  Dover  before  they  made  straight 
for  London  and  Oxford.  In  their  ignorance  of  the  road 
the  first  two  Gray  Brothers  lost  their  way  in  the  woods 
between  Oxford  and  Baldon,  and  fearful  of  night  and  of 
the  floods  turned  aside  to  a  grange  of  the  monks  of  Abing- 
don. Their  ragged  clothes  and  foreign  gestures,  as  they 
prayed  for  hospitality,  led  the  porter  to  take  them  for 
jongleurs,  the  jesters  and  jugglers  of  the  day,  and  the 
news  of  this  break  in  the  monotony  of  their  lives  brought 
prior,  sacrist,  and  cellarer  to  the  door  to  welcome  them 
and  witness  their  tricks.  The  disappointment  was  too 
much  for  the  temper  of  the  monks,  and  the  brothers  were 
kicked  roughly  from  the  gate  to  find  their  night's  lodging 
under  a  tree.  But  the  welcome  of  the  townsmen  made  up 
everywhere  for  the  ill-will  and  opposition  of  both  clergy 
and  monks.  The  work  of  the  Friars  was  physical  as  well 
as  moral.  The  rapid  progress  of  population  within  the 
boroughs  had  outstripped  the  sanitary  regulations  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  fever  or  plague  or  the  more  terrible 
scourge  of  leprosy  festered  in  the  wretched  hovels  of  the 
suburbs.  It  was  to  haunts  such  as  these  that  Francis  had 
pointed  his  disciples,  and  the  Gray  Brethren  at  once  fixed 
themselves  in  the  meanest  and  poorest  quarters  of  each 
town.  Their  first  work  lay  in  the  noisome  lazar-houses ; 
it  was  among  the  lepers  that  they  commonly  chose  the  site 
of  their  homes.  At  London  they  settled  in  the  shambles 
of  Newgate ;  at  Oxford  they  made  their  way  to  the  swampy 
ground  between  its  walls  and  the  streams  of  Thames. 
Huts  of  mud  and  timber,  as  mean  as  the  huts  around  them, 
rose  within  the  rough  fence  and  ditch  that  bounded  the 
Friary.  The  order  of  Francis  made  a  hard  fight  against 
the  taste  for  sumptuous  buildings  and  for  greater  personal 
comfort  which  characterized  the  time.  "  I  did  not  enter 
into  religion  to  build  walls,"  protested  an  English  provin- 
cial when  the  brethren  pressed  for  a  larger  house;  and 
Albert  of  Pisa  ordered  a  stone  cloister  which  the  burgesses 
of  Southampton  had  built  for  them  to  be  razed  to  the 


266  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 

ground.  "  You  need  no  little  mountains  to  lift  your  heads 
to  heaven,"  was  his  scornful  reply  to  a  claim  for  pillows. 
None  but  the  sick  went  shod.  An  Oxford  Friar  found  a 
pair  of  shoes  one  morning,  and  wore  them  at  matins.  At 
night  he  dreamed  that  robbers  leaped  on  him  in  a  danger- 
ous pass  between  Gloucester  and  Oxford  with  shouts  of 
"Kill,  kill!"  "I  am  a  friar,"  shrieked  the  terror-stricken 
brother.  "You  lie,"  was  the  instant  answer,  "for  you  go 
shod."  The  Friar  lifted  up  his  foot  in  disproof,  but  the 
shoe  was  there.  In  an  agony  of  repentance  he  woke  and 
flung  the  pair  out  of  window. 

It  was  with  less  success  that  the  order  struggled  against 
the  passion  of  the  time  for  knowledge.  Their  vow  of 
poverty,  rigidly  interpreted  as  it  was  by  their  founders, 
would  have  denied  them  the  possession  of  books  or  mate- 
rials for  study.  "  I  am  your  breviary,  I  am  your  breviary," 
Francis  cried  passionately  to  a  novice  who  asked  for  a 
psalter.  When  the  news  of  a  great  doctor's  reception  was 
brought  to  him  at  Paris,  his  countenance  fell.  "  I  am 
afraid,  my  son,"  he  replied,  "that  such  doctors  will  be  the 
destruction  of  my  vineyard.  They  are  the  true  doctors 
who  with  the  meekness  of  wisdom  show  forth  good  works 
for  the  edification  of  their  neighbors."  One  kind  of 
knowledge  indeed  their  work  almost  forced  on  them.  The 
popularity  of  their  preaching  soon  led  them  to  the  deeper 
study  of  theology ;  within  a  short  time  after  their  estab- 
lishment in  England  we  find  as  many  as  thirty  readers 
or  lecturers  appointed  at  Hereford,  Leicester,  Bristol,  and 
other  places,  a-nd  a  regular  succession  of  teachers  provided 
at  each  University.  The  Oxford  Dominicans  lectured  on 
theology  in  the  nave  of  their  new  church  while  philosophy 
was  taught  in  the  cloister.  The  first  provincial  of  the 
Gray  Friars  built  a  school  in  their  Oxford  house  and  per- 
suaded Grosseteste  to  lecture  there.  His  influence  after 
his  promotion  to  the  see  of  Lincoln  was  steadily  exerted  to 
secure  theological  study  among  the  Friars,  as  well  as  their 
establishment  in  ^/-'e  University;  and  in  this  work  he  was 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1291.  267 

ably  seconded  by  his  scholar,  Adam  Marsh,  or  de  Marisco, 
under  whom  the  Franciscan  school  at  Oxford  attained  a 
reputation  throughout  Christendom.  Lyons,  Paris,  and 
Koln  borrowed  from  it  their  professors:  it  was  through 
its  influence  indeed  that  Oxford  rose  to  a  position  hardly 
Inferior  to  that  of  Paris  itself  as  a  centre  of  scholasticism. 
But  the  result  of  this  powerful  impulse  was  soon  seen  to 
be  fatal  to  the  wider  intellectual  activity  which  had  till 
now  characterized  the  Universities.  Theology  in  its 
scholastic  form  resumed  its  supremacy  in  the  schools.  Its 
orvy  efficient  rivals  were  practical  studies  such  as  medi- 
crie  and  law.  The  last,  as  he  was  by  far  the  greatest, 
ir  stance  of  the  freer  and  wider  culture  which  had  been  the 
glory  of  the  last  century  was  Roger  Bacon,  and  no  name 
better  illustrates  the  rapidity  and  completeness  with  which 
it  passed  away. 

Roger  Bacon  was  the  child  of  royalist  parents  who  were 
driven  into  exile  and  reduced  to  poverty  by  the  civil  wars. 
From  Oxford,  where  he  studied  under  Edmund  of  Abing- 
don, to  whom  he  owed  his  introduction  to  the  works  of 
Aristotle,  he  passed  to  the  University  of  Paris,  and  spent 
his  whole  heritage  there  in  costly  studies  and  experiments. 
"From  my  youth  up,"  he  writes,  "I  have  labored  at  the 
sciences  and  tongues.  I  have  sought  the  friendship  of  all 
men  among  the  Latins  who  had  any  reputation  for  knowl- 
edge. I  have  caused  youths  to  be  instructed  in  languages, 
geometry,  arithmetic,  the  construction  of  tables  and  in- 
struments, and  many  needful  things  besides,"  The  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  such  studies  as  he  had  resolved  to 
pursue  were  immense.  He  was  without  instruments  or 
means  of  experiment,  "  Without  mathematical  instru- 
ments no  science  can  be  mastered,"  he  complains  after- 
ward, "  and  these  instruments  are  not  to  be  found  among 
the  Latins,  nor  could  they  be  made  for  two  or  three  hun- 
dred pounds.  Besides,  better  tables  are  indispensably 
necessary,  tables  on  which  the  motions  of  the  heavens  are 
certified  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  world  with- 


268  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  Hi. 


out  daily  labor,  but  these  tables  are  worth  a  king's  ransom 
and  could  not  be  made  without  a  vast  expense.  I  have 
often  attempted  the  composition  of  such  tables,  but  could 
not  finish  them  through  failure  of  means  and  the  folly  of 
those  whom  I  had  to  employ."  Books  were  difficult  and 
sometimes  even  impossible  to  procure.  "The  scientific 
works  of  Aristotle,  of  Avicenna,  of  Seneca,  of  Cicero,  and 
other  ancients  cannot  be  had  without  great  cost;  their 
principal  works  have  not  been  translated  into  Latin,  and 
copies  of  others  are  not  to  be  found  in  ordinary  libraries 
or  elsewhere.  The  admirable  books  of  Cicero  de  Republi«a 
are  not  to  be  found  anywhere,  so  far  as  I  can  hear,  though 
I  have  made  anxious  inquiry  for  them  in  different  parts 
of  the  world,  and  by  various  messengers.  I  could  never 
find  the  works  of  Seneca,  though  I  made  diligent  search 
for  them  during  twenty  years  and  more.  And  so  it  is 
with  many  more  most  useful  books  connected  with  the 
science  of  morals."  It  is  only  words  like  these  of  his  own 
that  bring  home  to  us  the  keen  thirst  for  knowledge,  the 
patience,  the  energy  of  Roger  Bacon.  He  returned  as  a 
teacher  to  Oxford,  and  a  touching  record  of  his  devotion 
to  those  whom  he  taught  remains  in  the  story  of  John  of 
London,  a  boy  of  fifteen,  whose  ability  raised  him  above 
the  general  level  of  his  pupils.  "  When  he  came  to  me  as 
a  poor  boy,"  says  Bacon  in  recommending  him  to  the 
Pope,  "  I  caused  him  to  be  nurtured  and  instructed  for  the 
love  of  God,  especially  since  for  aptitude  and  innocence  I 
have  never  found  so  towardly  a  youth.  Five  or  six  years 
ago  I  caused  him  to  be  taught  in  languages,  mathematics, 
and  optics,  and  I  have  gratuitously  instructed  him  with 
my  own  lips  since  the  time  that  I  received  your  mandate. 
There  is  no  one  at  Paris  who  knows  so  much  of  the  root 
of  philosophy,  though  he  has  not  produced  the  branches, 
flowers,  and  fruit  because  of  his  youth,  and  because  he 
has  had  no  experience  in  teaching.  But  he  has  the  means 
of  surpassing  all  the  Latins  if  he  live  to  grow  old  and  goes 
on  as  he  has  begun." 


Chap.  2.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  2G9 

The  pride  with  which  he  refers  to  his  system  of  instruc- 
tion was  justified  by  the  wide  extension  which  he  gave  to 
scientific  teaching  in  Oxford.  It  is  probably  of  himself 
that  he  speaks  when  he  tells  us  that  "  the  science  of  optics 
has  not  hitherto  been  lectured  on  at  Paris  or  elsewhere 
among  the  Latins,  save  twice  at  Oxford. "  It  was  a  science 
on  which  he  had  labored  for  ten  years.  But  his  teaching 
seems  to  have  fallen  on  a  barren  soil.  From  the  moment 
when  the  Friars  settled  in  the  Universities  scholasticism 
absorbed  the  whole  mental  energy  of  the  student  world. 
The  temper  of  the  age  was  against  scientific  or  philosophi- 
cal studies.  The  older  enthusiasm  for  knowledge  was 
dying  down ;  the  study  of  law  was  the  one  source  of  pro- 
motion, whether  in  Church  or  State;  philosophy  was  dis- 
credited, literature  in  its  purer  forms  became  almost  ex- 
tinct. After  forty  years  of  incessant  study.  Bacon  found 
himself  in  his  own  words  "unheard,  forgotten,  buried." 
He  seems  at  one  time  to  have  been  wealthy,  but  his  wealth 
was  gone.  "  During  the  twenty  years  that  I  have  specially 
labored  in  the  attainment  of  wisdom,  abandoning  the  path 
of  common  men,  I  have  spent  on  these  pursuits  more  than 
two  thousand  pounds,  not  to  mention  the  cost  of  books, 
experiments,  instruments,  tables,  the  acquisition  of  lan- 
guages, and  the  like.  Add  to  all  this  the  sacrifices  I  have 
made  to  procure  the  friendship  of  the  wise  and  to  obtain 
well- instructed  assistants."  Ruined  and  baffled  in  his 
hopes,  Bacon  listened  to  the  counsels  of  his  friend  Grosse- 
teste  and  renounced  the  world.  He  became  a  friar  of  the 
order  of  St.  Francis,  an  order  where  books  and  study  were 
looked  upon  as  hindrances  to  the  work  which  it  had  spe- 
cially undertaken,  that  of  preaching  among  the  masses  of 
the  poor.  He  had  written  little.  So  far  was  he  from  at- 
tempting to  write  that  his  new  superiors  prohibited  him 
from  publishing  anything  under  pain  of  forfeiture  of  the 
book  and  penance  of  bread  and  water.  But  we  can  see 
the  craving  of  his  mind,  the  passionate  instinct  of  creation 
which  marks  the  man  of  genius,  in  the  joy  with  which  be 


270  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


seized  a  strange  opportunity  that  suddenly  opened  before 
him.  "  Some  few  chapters  on  different  subjects,  written 
at  the  entreaty  of  friends,"  seem  to  have  got  abroad,  and 
were  brought  by  one  of  the  Pope's  chaplains  under  the 
notice  of  Clement  the  Fourth.  The  Pope  at  once  invited 
Bacon  to  write.  But  difficulties  stood  in  his  way.  Ma- 
terials, transcription,  and  other  expenses  for  such  a  work 
as  he  projected  would  cost  at  least  £60,  and  the  Pope  sent 
not  a  penny.  Bacon  begged  help  from  his  family,  but 
they  were  ruined  like  himself.  No  one  would  lend  to  a 
mendicant  friar,  and  when  his  friends  raised  the  money 
he  needed  it  was  by  pawning  their  goods  in  the  hope  of 
repayment  from  Clement.  Nor  was  this  all;  the  work 
itself,  abstruse  and  scientific  as  was  its  subject,  had  to  be 
treated  in  a  clear  and  popular  form  to  gain  the  Papal  ear. 
But  difficulties  which  would  have  crushed  another  man  only 
roused  Roger  Bacon  to  an  almost  superb viman  energy.  By 
the  close  of  12G7  the  work  was  done.  The  "  greater  work," 
itself  in  modern  formal  closely  printed  folio,  with  its  suc- 
cessive summaries  and  appendices  in  the  "  lesser"  and  the 
"  third"  works  (which  make  a  good  octavo  more) ,  were  pro- 
duced and  forwarded  to  the  Pope  within  fifteen  months. 

No  trace  of  this  fiery  haste  remains  in  the  book  itself. 
The  "  Opus  Majus"  is  alike  wonderful  in  plan  and  detail. 
Bacon's  main  purpose,  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Whewell,  is 
"  to  urge  the  necessity  of  a  reform  in  the  mode  of  philoso- 
phizing, to  set  forth  the  reasons  why  knowledge  had  not 
made  a  greater  progress,  to  draw  back  attention  to  sources 
of  knowledge  which  had  been  unwisely  neglected,  to  dis- 
cover other  sources  which  were  yet  wholly  unknown,  and 
to  animate  men  to  the  undertaking  by  a  prospect  of  the 
vast  advantages  which  it  offered. "  The  development  of  his 
scheme  is  on  the  largest  scale;  he  gathers  together  the 
whole  knowledge  of  his  time  on  every  branch  of  science 
which  it  possessed,  and  as  he  passes  them  in  review  he 
sviggests  improvements  in  nearly  all.  His  labors,  both  here 
and  in  his  after- works,  in  the  field  of  grammar  and  philol- 


Chap.  2.]  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1291.  271 

ogy,  his  perseverance  in  insisting  on  the  necessity  of  cor- 
rect texts,  of  an  accurate  knowledge  of  languages,  of  an 
exact  interpretation,  are  hardly  less  remarkable  than  his 
scientific  investigations.  From  grammar  he  passes  to 
mathematics,  from  mathematics  to  experimental  philoso- 
phy. Under  the  name  of  mathematics  indeed  was  in- 
cluded all  the  physical  science  of  the  time.  "  The  neglect 
of  it  for  nearly  thirty  or  forty  years,"  pleads  Bacon  pas- 
sionately, "hath  nearlj^  destroyed  the  entire  studies  of 
Latin  Christendom.  For  he  who  knows  not  mathematics 
cannot  know  any  other  sciences;  and  what  is  more,  he 
cannot  discover  his  own  ignorance  or  find  its  proper  reme- 
dies." Geography,  chronology,  arithmetic,  music,  are 
brought  into  something  of  scientific  form,  and  like  rapid 
sketches  are  given  of  the  question  of  climate,  hydrography, 
geography,  and  astrology.  The  subject  of  optics,  his  own 
especial  study,  is  treated  with  greater  fulness ;  he  enters 
into  the  question  of  the  anatomy  of  the  eye  besides  dis- 
cussing problems  which  lie  more  strictly  within  the  prov- 
ince of  optical  science.  In  a  word,  the  "Greater  Work," 
to  borrow  the  phrase  of  Dr.  Whewell,  is  "  at  once  the  En- 
cyclopaedia and  the  Novum  Organum  of  the  thirteenth 
century."  The  whole  of  the  after- works  of  Roger  Bacon 
— and  treatise  after  treatise  has  of  late  been  disentombed 
from  our  libraries — are  but  developments  in  detail  of  the 
magnificent  conception  he  laid  before  Clement.  Such  a 
work  was  its  own  great  reward.  From  the  world  around 
Roger  Bacon  could  look  for  and  found  small  recognition. 
No  word  of  acknowledgment  seems  to  have  reached  its 
author  from  the  Pope.  If  we  may  credit  a  more  recent 
story,  his  writings  only  gained  him  a  prison  from  his  order. 
"  Unheard,  forgotten,  buried, "  the  old  man  died  as  he  had 
lived,  and  it  has  been  reserved  for  later  ages  to  roll  away 
the  obscurity  that  had  gathered  round  his  memory,  and  to 
place  first  in  the  great  roll  of  modern  science  the  name  of 
Roger  Bacon. 
The  failure  of  Bacon  shows  the  overpowering  strength 


27'i  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

of  the  drift  toward  the  practical  studies,  and  above  all 
toward  theology  in  its  scholastic  guise.  Aristotle,  who 
had  been  so  long  held  at  bay  as  the  most  dangerous  foe  of 
mediaeval  faith,  was  now  turned  by  the  adoption  of  his 
logical  method  in  the  discussion  and  definition  of  theologi- 
cal dogma  into  its  unexpected  ally.  It  was  this  very 
method  that  led  to  "  that  unprofitable  subtlety  and  curi- 
osity" which  Lord  Bacon  notes  as  the  vice  of  the  scholastic 
philosophy.  But  "certain  it  is" — to  continue  the  same 
great  thinker's  comment  on  the  Friars — "that  if  these 
schoolmen  to  their  great  thirst  of  truth  and  unwearied 
travel  of  wit  had  joined  variety  of  reading  and  contem- 
plation, they  had  proved  excellent  lights  to  the  great  ad- 
vancement of  all  learning  and  knowledge. "  What,  amid 
all  their  errors,  they  undoubtedly  did  was  to  insist  on  the 
necessity  of  rigid  demonstration  and  a  more  exact  use  of 
words,  to  introduce  a  clear  and  methodical  treatment  of 
all  subjects  into  discussion,  and  above  all  to  substitute  an 
appeal  to  reason  for  unquestioning  obedience  to  authority. 
It  was  by  this  critical  tendency,  by  the  new  clearness  and 
precision  which  scholasticism  gave  to  inquiry,  that  in 
spite  of  the  trivial  questions  with  which  it  often  concerned 
itself  it  trained  the  human  mind  through  the  next  two 
centuries  to  a  temper  which  fitted  it  to  profit  by  the  great 
disclosure  of  knowledge  that  brought  about  the  Renas- 
cence. And  it  is  to  the  same  spirit  of  fearless  inquiry  as 
well  as  to  the  strong  popular  sympathies  which  their  very 
constitution  necessitated  that  we  must  attribute  the  influ- 
ence which  the  Friars  undoubtedly  exerted  in  the  coming 
struggle  between  the  people  and  the  Crown.  Their  posi- 
tion is  clearly  and  strongly  marked  throughout  the  whole 
contest.  The  University  of  Oxford,  which  soon  fell  under 
the  direction  of  their  teaching,  stood  first  in  its  resistance 
to  Papal  exactions  and  its  claim  of  English  liberty.  The 
classes  in  the  towns,  on  whom  the  influence  of  the  Friars 
told  most  directly,  were  steady  supporters  of  freedom 
throughout  the  Barons'  Wars. 


Chap.  2.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  273 

Politically  indeed  the  teaching  of  the  schoolmen  was  of 
immense  value,  for  it  set  on  a  religious  basis  and  gave 
an  intellectual  form  to  the  constitutional  theory  of  the  rela- 
tions between  King  and  people  which  was  slowly  emerging 
from  .the  struggle  with  the  Crown.  In  assuming  the  re- 
sponsibility of  a  Christian  king  to  God  for  the  good  gov- 
ernment of  his  realm,  in  surrounding  the  pledges  whether 
of  ruler  or  ruled  with  religious  sanctions,  the  mediaeval 
Church  entered  its  protest  against  any  personal  despotism. 
The  schoolmen  pushed  further  still  to  the  doctrine  of  a 
contract  between  King  and  people;  and  their  trenchant 
logic  made  short  work  of  the  royal  claims  to  irresponsible 
power  and  unquestioning  obedience.  "  He  who  would  be 
in  truth  a  king,"  ran  a  poem  which  embodies  their  teach- 
ing at  this  time  in  pungent  verse — "he  is  a  'free  king' 
indeed  if  he  rightly  rule  himself  and  his  realm.  All 
things  are  lawful  to  him  for  the  government  of  his  realm, 
but  nothing  is  lawful  to  him  for  its  destruction.  It  is 
one  thing  to  rule  according  to  a  king's  duty,  another  to 
destroy  a  kingdom  by  resisting  the  law."  "  Let  the  com- 
munity of  the  realm  advise,  and  let  it  be  known  what  the 
generality,  to  whom  their  laws  are  best  known,  think  on 
the  matter.  They  who  are  ruled  by  the  laws  know  those 
laws  best ;  they  who  make  daily  trial  of  them  are  best  ac- 
quainted with  them;  and  since  it  is  their  own  affairs 
which  are  at-  stake  they  will  take  the  more  care  and  will 
act  with  an  eye  to  their  own  peace."  "It  concerns  the 
community  to  see  what  sort  of  men  ought  justly  to  be 
chosen  for  the  weal  of  the  realm."  The  constitutional  re- 
strictions on  the  royal  authority,  the  right  of  the  whole 
nation  to  deliberate  and  decide  on  its  own  affairs  and  to 
have  a  voice  in  the  selection  of  the  administrators  of  gov- 
ernment, had  never  been  so  clearly  stated  before.  But  the 
importance  of  the  Friar's  work  lay  in  this,  that  the  work 
of  the  scholar  was  supplemented  by  that  of  the  popular 
preacher.  The  theory  of  government  wrought  out  in  cell 
and  lecture-room  was  carried  over  the  length  and  breadth 
Vol.  I.— 18 


274  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


of  the  land  by  the  mendicant  brother,  begging  his  way 
from  town  to  town,  chatting  with  farmer  or  housewife  at 
the  cottage  door,  and  setting  up  his  portable  pulpit  in 
village  green  or  market-place.  His  open-air  sermons,  rang- 
ing from  impassioned  devotion  to  coarse  story  and  homely 
mother-wit,  became  the  journals  as  well  as  the  homilies  of 
the  day ;  political  and  social  questions  found  place  in  them 
side  by  side  with  spiritual  matters ;  and  the  rudest  coun- 
tryman learned  his  tale  of  a  king's  oppression  or  a  patriot's 
hopes  as  he  listened  to  the  rambling,  passionate,  humorous 
discourse  of  the  begging  friar. 

Never  had  there  been  more  need  of  such  a  political  edu- 
cation of  the  whole  people  than  at  the  moment  we  have 
reached.  For  the  triumph  of  the  Charter,  the  constitu- 
tional government  of  Governor  and  Justiciar,  had  rested 
mainly  on  the  helplessness  of  the  King.  As  boy  or  youth, 
Henry  the  Third  had  bowed  to  the  control  of  William 
Marshal  or  Langton  or  Hubert  de  Burgh.  But  he  was 
now  grown  to  manhood,  and  his  character  was  from  this 
hour  to  tell  on  the  events  of  his  reign.  From  the  cruelty, 
the  lust,  the  impiety  of  his  father  the  young  King  was 
absolutely  free.  There  was  a  geniality,  a  vivacity,  a 
refinement  in  his  temper  which  won  a  personal  affection 
for  him  even  in  his  worst  days  from  some  who  bitterly 
censured  his  rale.  The  Abbey-church  of  Westminster, 
with  which  he  replaced  the  ruder  minster  of  the  Con- 
fessor, remains  a  monument  of  his  artistic  taste.  He  was 
a  patron  and  friend  of  men  of  letters,  and  himself  skilled 
in  the  "gay  science"  of  the  troubadours.  But  of  the 
political  capacity  which  was  the  characteristic  of  his 
house  he  had  little  or  none.  Profuse,  changeable,  false 
from  sheer  meanness  of  spirit,  impulsive  alike  in  good 
and  ill,  unbridled  in  temper  and  tongue,  reckless  in  in- 
gult  and  wit,  Henry's  delight  was  in  the  display  of 
an  empty  and  prodigal  magnificence,  his  one  notion  of 
government  was  a  dream  of  arbitrary  power.  But  friv- 
olous as  the  King^'s  mood  was,  he  clung  with  a  weak  man's 


Chap.  2.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  275 

obstinacy  to  a  distinct  line  of  policy;  and  this  was  the 
policy  not  of  Hubert  or  Langton  but  of  John.  He  cher- 
ished the  hope  of  recovering  his  heritage  across  the  sea. 
He  believed  in  the  absolute  power  of  the  Crown;  and 
looked  on  the  pledges  of  the  Great  Charter  as  promises 
which  force  had  wrested  from  the  King  and  which  force 
could  wrest  back  again.  France  was  telling  more  and 
more  on  English  opinion ;  and  the  claim  which  the  French 
kings  were  advancing  to  a  divine  and  absolute  power  gave 
a  sanction  in  Henry's  mind  to  the  claim  of  absolute  au- 
thority which  was  still  maintained  by  his  favorite  advisers 
in  the  royal  council.  Above  all  he  clung  to  the  alliance 
with  the  Papacy.  Henry  was  personally  devout ;  and  his 
devotion  only  bound  him  the  more  firmly  to  his  father's 
system  of  friendship  with  Rome.  Gratitude  and  self- 
interest  alike  bound  him  to  the  Papal  See.  Rome  had 
saved  him  from  ruin  as  a  child;  its  legate  had  set  the 
crown  on  his  head ;  its  threats  and  excommunications  had 
foiled  Lewis  and  built  up  again  a  royal  party.  Above  all 
it  was  Rome  which  could  alone  free  him  from  his  oath 
to  the  Charter,  and  which  could  alone  defend  him  if  like 
his  father  he  had  to  front  the  baronage  in  arms. 

His  temper  was  now  to  influence  the  whole  system  of 
government.  In  1227  Henry  declared  himself  of  age;  and 
though  Hubert  still  remained  Justiciar  every  year  saw 
him  more  powerless  in  his  struggle  with  the  tendencies  of 
the  King.  The  death  of  Stephen  Langton  in  1228  was  a 
yet  heavier  blow  to  English  freedom.  In  persuading 
Rome  to  withdraw  her  Legate  the  Primate  had  averted  a 
conflict  between  the  national  desire  for  self-government 
and  the  Papal  claims  of  overlordship.  But  his  death  gave 
the  signal  for  a  more  serious  struggle,  for  it  was  in  the 
oppression  of  the  Church  of  England  by  the  Popes  through 
the  reign  of  Henry  that  the  little  rift  first  opened  which 
was  destined  to  widen  into  the  gulf  that  parted  the  one 
from  the  other  at  the  Reformation.  In  the  mediaeval 
theory  of  the  Papacy,  as  Innocent  and  his  successors  held 


27  G  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

it,  Christendom,  as  a  spiritual  realm  of  which  the  Popes 
were  the  head,  took  the  feudal  form  of  the  secular  realms 
which  lay  within  its  pale.  The  Pope  was  its  sovereign, 
the  Bishops  were  his  barons,  and  the  clergy  were  his 
under- vassals.  As  the  King  demanded  aids  and  subsidies 
in  case  of  need  from  his  liegemen,  so  in  the  theory  of  Rome 
might  the  head  of  the  Church  demand  aid  in  need  from 
the  priesthood.  And  at  this  moment  the  need  of  the  Popes 
was  sore.  Rome  had  plunged  into  her  desperate  conflict 
with  the  Emperor,  Frederick  the  Second,  and  was  looking 
everywhere  for  the  means  of  recruiting  her  drained  ex- 
chequer. On  England  she  believed  herself  to  have  more 
than  a  spiritual  claim  for  support.  She  regarded  the  king- 
dom as  a  vassal  kingdom,  and  as  bound  to  aid  its  overlord. 
It  was  only  by  the  promise  of  a  heavy  subsidy  that  Henry 
in  1229  could  buy  the  Papal  confirmation  of  Langton's 
successor.  But  the  baronage  was  of  other  mind  than 
Henry  as  to  this  claim  of  overlordship,  and  the  demand  of 
an  aid  to  Rome  from  the  laity  was  at  once  rejected  by 
them.  Her  spiritual  claim  over  the  allegiance  of  the 
clergy,  however,  remained  to  fall  back  upon,  and  the 
clergy  were  in  the  Pope's  hand.  Gregory  the  Ninth  had 
already  claimed  for  the  Papal  see  a  right  of  nomination 
to  some  prebends  in  each  cathedral  church ;  he  now  de- 
manded a  tithe  of  all  the  movables  of  the  priesthood,  and 
a  threat  of  excommunication  silenced  their  murmurs. 
Exaction  followed  exaction  as  the  needs  of  the  Papal  treas- 
ury grew  greater.  The  very  rights  of  lay  patrons  were 
set  aside,  and  under  the  name  of  "  reserves"  presentations 
to  English  benefices  were  sold  in  the  Papal  market,  while 
Italian  clergy  were  quartered  on  the  best  livings  of  the 
Church. 

The  general  indignation  at  last  found  vent  in  a  wide 
conspiracy.  In  1231  letters  from  "  the  whole  body  of  those 
who  prefer  to  die  rather  than  be  ruined  by  the  Romans" 
were  scattered  over  the  kingdom  by  armed  men;  tithes 
gathered  for  the  Pope  or  the  foreign  priests  were  seized 


Chap.  9.]  THE  CHARTER.    1204—1391.  277 

and  given  to  the  poor;  the  Papal  collectors  were  beaten 
and  their  bulls  trodden  under  foot.  The  remonstrances  of 
Rome  only  made  clearer  the  national  character  of  the 
movement ;  but  as  inquiry  went  on  the  hand  of  the  Justi- 
ciar himself  was  seen  to  have  been  at  work.  Sheriffs  had 
stood  idly  by  while  violence  was  done ;  royal  letters  had 
been  shown  by  the  rioters  as  approving  their  acts ;  and  the 
Pope  openly  laid  the  charge  of  the  outbreak  on  the  secret 
connivance  of  Hubert  de  Burgh.  No  charge  could  have 
been  more  fatal  to  Hubert  in  the  mind  of  the  King.  But 
he  was  already  in  full  collision  with  the  Justiciar  on  other 
grounds.  Henry  was  eager  to  vindicate  his  right  to  the 
great  heritage  his  father  had  lost :  the  Gascons,  who  still 
clung  to  him,  not  because  they  loved  England  but  because 
they  hated  France,  spurred  him  to  war;  and  in  1229  a 
secret  invitation  came  from  the  Norman  barons.  But 
while  Hubert  held  power  no  serious  effort  was  made  to 
carry  on  a  foreign  strife.  The  Norman  call  was  rejected 
through  his  influence,  and  when  a  great  armament  gath- 
ered at  Portsmouth  for  a  campaign  in  Poitou  it  dispersed 
for  want  of  transports  and  supplies.  The  young  King 
drew  his  sword  and  rushed  madly  on  the  Justiciar,  charg- 
ing him  with  treason  and  corruption  by  the  gold  of  France. 
But  the  quarrel  was  appeased  and  the  expedition  deferred 
for  the  year.  In  1230  Henry  actually  took  the  field  in 
Brittany  and  Poitou,  but  the  failure  of  the  campaign  was 
again  laid  at  the  door  of  Hubert  whose  opposition  was 
said  to  have  prevented  a  decisive  engagement.  It  was  at 
this  moment  that  the  Papal  accusation  filled  up  the  meas- 
ure of  Henry's  wrath  against  his  minister.  In  the  sum- 
mer of  1232  he  was  deprived  of  his  olBfice  of  Justiciar, 
and  dragegd  from  the  chapel  at  Brentwood  where  threats 
of  death  had  driven  him  to  take  sanctuary.  A  smith  who 
was  ordered  to  shackle  him  stoutly  refused.  "  I  will  die 
any  death,"  he  said,  "before  I  put  iron  on  the  man  who 
freed  England  from  the  stranger  and  saved  Dover  from 
France."     The  remonstrances  of  the  Bishop  of  London 


278  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 

forced  the  King  to  replace  Hubert  in  sanctuary,  but  hun- 
ger compelled  him  to  surrender;  he  was  thrown  a  prisoner 
into  the  Tower,  and  though  soon  released  he  remained 
powerless  in  the  realm.  His  fall  left  England  without  a 
check  to  the  rule  of  Henry  himself. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  barons'   war. 
1232—1273. 

Once  master  of  his  realm,  Henry  the  Third  was  quick 
to  declare  his  plan  of  government.  The  two  great  checks 
on  a  merely  personal  rule  lay  as  yet  in  the  authority  of 
the  great  ministers  of  State  and  in  the  national  character 
of  the  administrative  body  which  had  been  built  up  by 
Henry  the  Second.  Both  of  these  checks  Henry  at  once 
set  himself  to  remove.  He  would  be  his  own  minister. 
The  Justiciar  ceased  to  be  the  Lieutenant-General  of  the 
King  and  dwindled  into  a  presiding  judge  of  the  law- 
courts.  The  Chancellor  had  grown  into  a  great  officer  of 
State,  and  in  122G  this  office  had  been  conferred  on  the 
Bishop  of  Chichester  by  the  advice  and  consent  of  the 
Great  Council.  But  Henry  succeeded  in  wresting  the  seal 
from  him  and  naming  to  this  as  to  other  offices  at  his 
pleasure.  His  policy  was  to  intrust  all  high  posts  of 
government  to  mere  clerks  of  the  royal  chapel;  trained 
administrators,  but  wholly  dependent  on  the  royal  will. 
He  found  equally  dependent  agents  of  administration  by 
surrounding  himself  with  foreigners.  The  return  of  Peter 
des  Roches  to  the  royal  councils  was  the  first  sign  of  the 
new  system ;  and  hosts  of  hungry  Poitevins  and  Bretons 
were  summoned  over  to  occupy  the  royal  castles  and  fill 
the  judicial  and  administrative  posts  about  the  Court.  The 
King's  marriage  in  123G  to  Eleanor  of  Provence  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  arrival  in  England  of  the  new  Queen's 
uncles.  The  "Savoy,"  as  his  house  in  the  Strand  was 
named,  still  recalls  Peter  of  Savoy  who  arrived  five  years 
later  to  take  for  a  while  the  chief  place  at  Henry's  coun- 


280  HISTORY   OF  TIU:  ENGLISH   PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

cil-board;  another  brother,  Boniface,  was  consecrated  on 
Archbishop  Edmund's  death  to  the  highest  post  in  the 
realm  save  the  Crown  itself,  the  Archbishopric  of  Canter- 
bury. The  young  Primate,  like  his  brother,  brought  with 
him  foreign  fashions  strange  enough  to  English  folk.  His 
armed  retainers  pillaged  the  markets.  His  own  archi- 
episcopal  fist  felled  to  the  ground  the  prior  of  St.  Bartholo- 
mew-by-Smithfield  who  opposed  his  visitation.  London 
was  roused  by  the  outrage;  on  the  King's  refusal  to  do 
justice  a  noisy  crowd  of  citizens  surrounded  the  Primate's 
house  at  Lambeth  with  cries  of  vengeance,  and  the  "  hand- 
some archbishop,"  as  his  followers  styled  him,  was  glad 
to  escape  over  sea.  This  brood  of  Provengals  was  followed 
in  1243  by  the  arrival  of  the  Poitevin  relatives  of  John'5 
queen,  Isabella  of  Angouleme.  Aymer  was  made  Bishop 
of  Winchester ;  William  of  Valence  received  at  a  later  time 
the  earldom  of  Pembroke.  Even  the  King's  jester  was  a 
Poitevin.  Hundreds  of  their  dependants  followed  these 
great  nobles  to  find  a  fortune  in  the  English  realm.  The 
Poitevin  lords  brought  in  their  train  a  bevy  of  ladies  in 
search  of  husbands,  and  three  English  earls  who  were  in 
royal  wardship  were  wedded  by  the  King  to  foreigners. 
The  whole  machinery  of  administration  passed  into  the 
hands  of  men  who  were  ignorant  and  contemptuous  of  the 
principles  of  English  government  or  English  law.  Their 
rule  was  a  mere  anarchy ;  the  very  retainers  of  the  royal 
household  turned  robbers  and  pillaged  foreign  merchants 
in  the  precincts  of  the  Court ;  corruption  invaded  the  judi- 
cature; at  the  close  of  this  period  of  misrule  Henry  de 
Bath,  a  justiciary,  was  proved  to  have  openly  taken  bribes 
and  to  have  adjudged  to  himself  disputed  estates. 

That  misgovemment  of  this  kind  should  have  gone  on 
unchecked  in  defiance  of  the  provisions  of  the  Charter  was 
owing  to  the  disunion  and  sluggishness  of  the  English 
baronage.  On  the  first  arrival  of  the  foreigners  Richard, 
the  Earl  Mareschal,  a  son  of  the  great  Regent,  stood  forth  as 
their  leader  to  demand  the  expulsion  of  the  strangers  from 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  281 

the  royal  Council.  Though  deserted  by  the  bulk  of  the 
nobles  he  defeated  the  foreign  troops  sent  against  him  and 
forced  the  King  to  treat  for  peace.  But  at  this  critical 
moment  the  Earl  was  drawn  by  an  intrigue  of  Peter  des 
Roches 4o  Ireland;  he  fell  in  a  petty  skirmish,  and  the 
barons  were  left  without  a  head.  The  interposition  of  a 
new  primate,  Edmund  of  Abingdon,  forced  the  King  to 
dismiss  Peter  from  court ;  but  there  was  no  real  change  of 
system,  and  the  remonstrances  of  the  Archbishop  and  of 
Robert  Grosseteste,  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  remained  fruit- 
less. In  the  long  interval  of  misrule  the  financial  straits 
of  the  King  forced  him  to  heap  exaction  on  exaction.  The 
Forest  Laws  were  used  as  a  means  of  extortion,  sees  and 
abbej'S  were  kept  vacant,  loans  were  wrested  from  lords 
and  prelates,  the  Court  itself  lived  at  free  quarters  when- 
ever it  moved.  Supplies  of  this  kind,  however,  were  ut- 
terly insufficient  to  defray  the  cost  of  the  King's  prodigal- 
ity. A  sixth  of  the  royal  revenue  was  wasted  in  pensions 
to  foreign  favorites.  The  debts  of  the  Crown  amounted 
to  four  times  its  annual  income.  Henry  was  forced  to 
appeal  for  aid  to  the  great  Council  of  the  realm,  and  aid 
was  granted  in  1237  on  promise  of  control  in  its  expendi- 
ture and  on  condition  that  the  King  confirmed  the  Charter. 
But  Charter  and  promise  were  alike  discarded;  and  in 
1242  the  resentment  of  the  barons  expressed  itself  in  a  de- 
termined protest  and  a  refusal  of  further  subsidies.  In 
spite  of  their  refusal,  however,  Henry  gathered  money 
enough  for  a  costly  expedition  for  the  recovery  of  Poitou. 
The  attempt  ended  in  failure  and  shame.  At  Taillebourg 
the  King's  force  fled  in  disgraceful  rout  before  the  French 
as  far  as  Saintes,  and  only  the  sudden  illness  of  Lewis  the 
Ninth  and  a  disease  which  scattered  his  army  saved  Bor- 
deaux from  the  conquerors.  The  treasury  was  utterly 
drained,  and  Henry  was  driven  in  1244  to  make  a  fresh 
appeal  with  his  own  mouth  to  the  baronage.  But  the 
barons  had  now  rallied  to  a  plan  of  action,  and  we  can 
hardly  fail  to  attribute  their  union  to  the  man  who  appeara 


282  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOFLE.     [Book  III. 


at  their  head.     This  was  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  Simon  of 
Moiitfort. 

Simon  was  the  son  of  another  Simon  of  Montfort,  whose 
name  had  become  memorable  for  his  ruthless  crusade 
against  the  Albigensian  heretics  in  Southern  Gaul,  and 
who  had  inherited  the  Earldom  of  Leicester  through  his 
mother,  a  sister  and  co-heiress  of  the  last  Earl  of  the  house 
of  Beaumont.  But  as  Simon's  tendencies  were  for  the^ 
most  part  French,  John  had  kept  the  revenues  of  the  earl- 
dom in  his  own  hands,  and  on  his  death  the  claim  of  his 
elder  son,  Amaury,  was  met  by  the  refusal  of  Henry  the 
Third  to  accept  a  divided  allegiance.  The  refusal  marks 
the  rapid  growth  of  that  sentiment  of  nationality  which 
the  loss  of  Normandy  had  brought  home.  Amaury  chose 
to  remain  French,  and  by  a  family  arrangement  with  the 
King's  sanction  the  honor  of  Leicester  passed  in  1231  to 
his  younger  brother  Simon.  His  choice  made  Simon  an 
Englishman,  but  his  foreign  blood  still  moved  the  jealousy 
of  the  barons,  and  this  jealousy  was  quickened  by  a  secret 
match  in  1238  with  Eleanor,  the  King's  sister  and  widow 
of  the  second  William  Marshal.  The  match  formed  prob- 
ably part  of  a  policy  which  Henry  pursued  throughout  his 
reign  of  bringing  the  great  earldoms  into  closer  connection 
with  the  Crown.  That  of  Chester  had  fallen  to  the  King 
through  the  extinction  of  the  family  of  its  earls;  Cornwall 
was  held  by  his  brother,  Richard ;  Salisbury  by  his  cousin. 
Simon's  marriage  linked  the  Earldom  of  Leicester  to  the 
royal  house.  But  it  at  once  brought  Simon  into  conflict 
with  the  nobles  and  the  Church.  The  baronage,  justly 
indignant  that  such  a  step  should  have  been  taken  withom: 
their  consent,  for  the  Queen  still  remained  childless  and 
Eleanor's  children  by  one  whom  they  looked  on  as  a 
stranger  promised  to  be  heirs  of  the  Crown,  rose  in  a  re- 
volt which  failed  only  through  the  desertion  of  their  head, 
Earl  Richard  of  Cornwall,  who  was  satisfied  with  Earl 
Simon's  withdrawal  from  the  royal  Council.  The  cen- 
sures of  the  Church  on  Eleanor's  breach  of  a  vow  of  chaste 


Chap.  3.}  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  283 

widowhood  which  she  had  made  at  her  first  husband's 
death  W6»"e  averted  with  hardly  less  difficulty  by  a  journey 
to  Rome.  It  was  after  a  year  of  trouble  that  Simon  re- 
turned to  England  to  reap  as  it  seemed  the  fruits  of  his 
high  alliance.  He  was  now  formally  made  Earl  of  Leices- 
ter and  re-entered  the  royal  Council.  But  it  is  probable 
that  he  still  found  there  the  old  jealousy  which  had  forced 
from  him  a  pledge  of  retirement  after  his  marriage ;  and 
that  his  enemies  now  succeeded  in  winning  over  the  King. 
In  a  few  months,  at  any  rate,  he  found  the  changeable 
King  alienated  from  him,  he  was  driven  by  a  burst  of 
royal  passion  from  the  realm,  and  was  forced  to  spend 
seven  months  in  France. 

Henry's  anger  passed  as  quickly  as  it  had  risen,  and  in 
the  spring  of  1240  the  Earl  was  again  received  with  honor 
at  court.  It  was  from  this  moment,  however,  that  his 
position  changed.  As  yet  it  had  been  that  of  a  foreigner, 
confounded  in  the  eyes  of  the  nation  at  large  with  the 
Poitevins  and  Provenyals  who  swarmed  about  the  court. 
But  in  the  years  of  retirement  which  followed  Simon's 
return  to  England  his  whole  attitude  was  reversed.  There 
was  as  yet  no  quarrel  with  the  King :  he  followed  him  in 
a  campaign  across  the  Channel,  and  shared  in  his  defeat 
at  Saintes.  But  he  was  a  friend  of  Grosseteste  and  a 
patron  of  the  Friars,  and  became  at  last  known  as  a  steady 
opponent  of  the  misrule  about  him.  When  prelates  and 
barons  chose  twelve  representatives  to  confer  with  Henry 
in  1244  Simon  stood  with  Earl  Richard  of  Cornwall  at  the 
head  of  them.  A  definite  plan  of  reform  disclosed  his 
hand.  The  confirmation  of  the  Charter  was  to  be  followed 
by  the  election  of  Justiciar,  Chancellor,  Treasurer  in  the 
Great  Council.  Nor  was  this  restoration  of  a  responsible 
ministry  enough ;  a  perpetual  Council  was  to  attend  the 
King  and  devise  further  reforms.  The  plan  broke  against 
Henry's  resistance  and  a  Papal  prohibition ;  but  from  this 
time  the  Earl  took  his  stand  in  the  front  rank  of  the  patriot 
leaders.     The  struggle  of  the  following  years  was  chiefly 


280  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE      [Book  HI 


Friar  Adam,  "  than  a  strong  man,  and  be  who  can  rule  his 
own  temper  than  he  who  storms  a  city."  But  the  one 
characteristic  which  overmastered  all  was  what  men  at 
that  time  called  his  "constancy,"  the  firm  immovable  re- 
solve which  trampled  even  death  under  foot  in  its  loyalty 
to  the  right.  The  motto  which  Edward  the  First  chose  as 
his  device,  "Keep  troth,"  was  far  truer  as  the  device 
of  Earl  Simon.  We  see  in  bis  correspondence  with  what 
a  clear  discernment  of  its  difficulties  both  at  home  and 
abroad  he  "  thought  it  unbecoming  to  decline  the  danger 
of  so  great  an  exploit"  as  the  reduction  of  Gascony  to  peace 
and  order ;  but  once  undertaken,  he  persevered  in  spite  of 
the  opposition  he  met  with,  the  failure  of  all  support  or 
funds  from  England,  and  the  King's  desertion  of  his  cause, 
till  the  work  was  done.  There  was  the  same  steadiness  of 
will  and  purpose  in  his  patriotism.  The  letters  of  Robert 
Grosseteste  show  how  early  Simon  had  learned  to  sympa- 
thize with  the  Bishop  in  his  resistance  to  Rome,  and  at 
the  crisis  of  the  contest  he  offered  him  his  own  support 
and  that  of  his  associates.  But  I-obert  passed  away,  and 
as  the  tide  of  misgovernment  mounted  higher  and  higher 
the  Earl  silently  trained  himself  for  the  day  of  trial.  The 
fruit  of  his  self-discipline  was  seen  when  the  crisis  came. 
While  other  men  wavered  and  faltered  and  fell  away,  the 
enthusiastic  love  of  the  people  clung  to  the  grave,  stem 
soldier  who  "stood  like  a  pillar,"  unshaken  by  promise  or 
threat  or  fear  of  death,  by  the  oath  he  had  sworn. 

While  Simon  had  been  warring  with  Gascon  rebels  af- 
fairs in  England  had  been  going  from  bad  to  worse.  The 
scourge  of  Papal  taxation  fell  heavier  on  the  clergy.  After 
vain  appeals  to  Rome  and  to  the  King,  Archbishop  Ed- 
mund retired  to  an  exile  of  despair  at  Pontigny,  and  tax- 
gatherer  after  tax-gatherer  with  powers  of  excommunica- 
tion, suspension  from  orders,  and  presentation  to  benefices, 
descended  on  the  unhappy  priesthood.  The  wholesale  pil- 
lage kindled  a  wide  spirit  of  resistance.  Oxford  gave  the 
signal  by  hunting  a  Papal  legate  out  of  the  city  amid  cries 


Chap.  B.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  287 

of  "usurer"  and  "simoniac"  from  the  mob  of  students. 
Fulk  Fitz-Warenne  in  the  name  of  the  barons  bade  a 
Papal  collector  begone  out  of  England.  "If  you  tarry- 
here  three  days  longer,"  he  added,  "you  and  your  com- 
pany sliall  be  cut  to  pieces."  For  a  time  Henry  himself 
was  swept  away  by  the  tide  of  national  indignation.  Let- 
ters from  the  King,  the  nobles,  and  the  prelates,  protested 
against  the  Papal  exactions,  and  orders  were  given  that 
no  money  should  be  exported  from  the  realm.  But  the 
threat  of  interdict  soon  drove  Henry  back  on  a  policy  of 
spoliation  in  which  he  went  hand  in  hand  with  Rome. 
The  temper  which  this  oppression  begot  among  even  the 
most  sober  churchmen  has  been  preserved  for  us  by  an  an- 
nalist whose  pages  glow  with  the  new  outburst  of  patriotic 
feeling.  Matthew  Paris  is  the  greatest,  as  he  in  reality 
is  the  last,  of  our  monastic  historians.  The  school  of  St. 
Alban's  survived  indeed  till  a  far  later  time,  but  its  writers 
dwindle  into  mere  annalists,  whose  view  is  bounded  by  the 
abbey  precincts  and  whose  work  is  as  colorless  as  it  is  je- 
june. In  Matthew  the  breadth  and  precision  of  the  nar- 
rative, the  copiousness  of  his  information  on  topics  whether 
national  or  European,  the  general  fairness  and  justice  of 
his  comments,  are  only  surpassed  by  the  patriotic  fire  and 
enthusiasm  of  the  whole.  He  had  succeeded  Rover  of 
Wendover  as  chronicler  at  St.  Alban's ;  and  the  Greater 
Chronicle  with  an  abridgement  of  it  which  long  passed 
under  the  name  of  Matthew  of  Westminster,  a  "  History 
of  the  English,"  and  the  "Lives  of  the  Earlier  Abbots," 
are  onl}'  a  few  among  the  voluminous  works  which  attest 
his  prodigious  industry.  He  was  an  artist  as  well  as  an 
historian,  and  many  of  the  manuscripts  which  are  pre- 
served are  illustrated  by  his  own  hand.  A  large  circle  of 
correspondents — bishops  like  Grosseteste,  ministers  like 
Hubert  de  Burgh,  oiSicials  like  Alexander  de  Swereford — 
furnished  him  with  minute  accounts  of  political  and  eccle- 
siastical proceedings.  Pilgrims  from  the  East  and  Papal 
agents  brought  news  of  foreign  events  to  his  scriptorium 


•288  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III 

at  St.  Alban's.  He  had  access  to  and  quotes  largely  from 
state  documents,  charters  and  exchequer  rolls.  The  fre- 
quency of  royal  visits  to  the  abbey  brought  him  a  store  of 
political  intelligence,  and  Henry  himself  contributed  to 
the  great  chronicle  which  has  preserved  with  so  terrible  a 
faithfulness  the  memory  of  his  weakness  and  misgovem- 
ment.  On  one  solemn  feast-day  the  King  recognized  Mat- 
thew, and  bidding  him  sit  on  the  middle  step  between  the 
floor  and  the  throne  begged  him  to  write  the  story  of  the 
day's  proceedings.  While  on  a  visit  to  St.  Alban's  he  in- 
vited him  to  his  table  and  chamber,  and  enumerated  by 
name  two  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  English  baronies  for 
his  information.  But  all  this  royal  patronage  has  left  lit- 
tle mark  on  his  work.  "  The  case,"  as  Matthew  says,  "of 
historical  writers  is  hard,  for  if  they  tell  the  truth  they 
provoke  men,  and  if  they  write  what  is  false  they  offend 
God."  With  all  the  fulness  of  the  school  of  court  histori- 
ans, such  as  Benedict  and  Hoveden,  to  which  in  form  he 
belonged,  Matthew  Paris  combines  an  independence  and 
patriotism  which  is  strange  to  their  pages.  He  denounces 
with  the  same  unsparing  energy  the  oppression  of  the  Pa- 
pacy and  of  the  King.  His  point  of  aim  is  neither  that  of 
a  courtier  nor  of  a  churchman,  but  of  an  Englishman,  and 
the  new  national  tone  of  his  chronicle  is  but  the  echo  of 
a  national  sentiment  which  at  last  bound  nobles  and  yeo- 
men and  churchmen  together  into  a  people  resolute  to  wrest 
freedom  from  the  Crown. 

The  nation  was  outraged  like  the  Church.  Two  solemn 
confirmations  of  the  Charter  failed  to  bring  about  any 
compliance  with  its  provisions.  In  1248,  in  1249,  and 
again  in  1255  the  great  Council  fruitlessly  renewed  its  de- 
mand for  a  regular  ministry,  and  the  growing  resolve  of 
the  nobles  to  enforce  good  government  was  seen  in  their 
offer  of  a  grant  on  condition  that  the  great  officers  of  the 
Crown  were  appointed  in  the  Council  of  the  Baronage. 
But  Henry  refused  their  offer  with  scorn  and  sold  his  plate 
to  the  citizens  of  London  to  find  payment  for  his  hous©- 


CUAP.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  289 

hold.  A  spirit  of  mutinous  defiance  broke  out  on  the  fail- 
ure of  all  legal  remedy.  When  the  Earl  of  Norfolk  refused 
him  aid  Henry  answered  with  a  threat.  "  I  will  send  reap- 
ers and  reap  your  fields  for  you,"  he  said.  "And  I  will 
send  you  back  the  heads  of  your  reapers, "  replied  the  Earl. 
Hampered  by  the  profusion  of  the  court  and  the  refusal  of 
supplies,  the  Crown  was  in  fact  penniless;  and  j-et  never 
was  money  more  wanted,  for  a  trouble  which  had  long 
pressed  upon  the  English  kings  had  now  grown  to  a  height 
that  called  for  decisive  action.  Even  his  troubles  at  home 
could  not  blind  Henry  to  the  need  of  dealing  with  the  difii- 
culty  of  "Wales.  Of  the  three  Welsh  states  into  which  all 
that  remained  unconquered  of  Britain  had  been  broken  by 
the  victories  of  Deorham  and  Chester,  two  had  long  ceased 
to  exist.  The  country  between  the  Clyde  and  the  Dee  had 
been  gradually  absorbed  by  the  conquests  of  Northumbria 
and  the  growth  of  the  Scot  monarchy.  West  Wales,  be- 
tween the  British  Channel  and  the  estuary  of  the  Severn, 
had  yielded  to  the  sword  of  Ecgberht.  But  a  fiercer  re- 
sistance prolonged  the  independence  of  the  great  central 
portion  which  alone  in  modem  language  preserves  the  name 
of  Wales.  Comprising  in  itself  the  largest  and  most  pow- 
erful of  the  British  kingdoms,  it  was  aided  in  its  struggle 
against  Mercia  by  the  weakness  of  its  assailant,  the  young- 
est and  feeblest  of  the  English  States,  as  well  as  by  an  in- 
ternal warfare  which  distracted  the  energies  of  the  invad- 
ers. But  Mercia  had  no  sooner  risen  to  supremacy  among 
the  English  kingdoms  than  it  took  the  work  of  conquest 
vigorously  in  hand.  Offa  tore  from  Wales  the  borderland 
between  the  Severn  and  the  Wye ;  the  raids  of  his  success- 
ors carried  fire  and  sword  into  the  heart  of  the  country; 
and  an  acknowledgment  of  the  Mercian  over-lordship  was 
wrested  from  the  Welsh  princes.  On  the  fall  of  Mercia 
this  overlordship  passed  to  the  AVest-Saxon  kings,  and  the 
Laws  of  Howel  Dda  own  the  payment  of  a  yearly  tribute 
by  "the  prince  of  Aberffraw"  to  "the  King  of  London." 
The  weakness  of  England  during  her  long  struggle  with 
Vol.  I.— 19 


288  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III 

at  St.  Alban's.  He  had  access  to  and  quotes  largely  from 
state  documents,  charters  and  exchequer  rolls.  The  fre- 
quency of  royal  visits  to  the  abbey  brought  him  a  store  of 
political  intelligence,  and  Henry  himself  contributed  to 
the  great  chronicle  which  has  preserved  with  so  terrible  a 
faithfulness  the  memory  of  his  weakness  and  misgovem- 
ment.  On  one  solemn  feast-day  the  King  recognized  Mat- 
thew, and  bidding  him  sit  on  the  middle  step  between  the 
floor  and  the  throne  begged  him  to  write  the  story  of  the 
day's  proceedings.  While  on  a  visit  to  St.  Alban's  he  in- 
vited him  to  his  table  and  chamber,  and  enumerated  by 
name  two  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  English  baronies  for 
his  information.  But  all  this  royal  patronage  has  left  lit- 
tle mark  on  his  work.  "  The  case,"  as  Matthew  says,  "  of 
historical  writers  is  hard,  for  if  they  tell  the  truth  they 
provoke  men,  and  if  they  write  what  is  false  they  offend 
God."  With  all  the  fulness  of  the  school  of  court  histori- 
ans, such  as  Benedict  and  Hoveden,  to  which  in  form  he 
belonged,  Matthew  Paris  combines  an  independence  and 
patriotism  which  is  strange  to  their  pages.  He  denounces 
with  the  same  unsparing  energy  the  oppression  of  the  Pa- 
pacy and  of  the  King.  His  point  of  aim  is  neither  that  of 
a  courtier  nor  of  a  churchman,  but  of  an  Englishman,  and 
the  new  national  tone  of  his  chronicle  is  but  the  echo  of 
a  national  sentiment  which  at  last  bound  nobles  and  yeo- 
men and  churchmen  together  into  a  people  resolute  to  wrest 
freedom  from  the  Crown. 

The  nation  was  outraged  like  the  Church.  Two  solemn 
confirmations  of  the  Charter  failed  to  bring  about  any 
compliance  with  its  provisions.  In  1248,  in  1249,  and 
again  in  1255  the  great  Council  fruitlessly  renewed  its  de- 
mand for  a  regular  ministry,  and  the  growing  resolve  of 
the  nobles  to  enforce  good  government  was  seen  in  their 
offer  of  a  grant  on  condition  that  the  great  officers  of  the 
Crown  were  appointed  in  the  Council  of  the  Baronage. 
But  Henry  refused  their  offer  with  scorn  and  sold  his  plate 
to  the  citizens  of  London  to  find  payment  for  his  house- 


CilAP.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  289 

hold.  A  spirit  of  mutinous  defiance  broke  out  on  the  fail- 
ure of  all  legal  remedy.  When  the  Earl  of  Norfolk  refused 
him  aid  Henry  answered  with  a  threat.  "  I  will  send  reap- 
ers and  reap  j'our  fields  for  you,"  he  said.  "And  I  will 
send  you  back  the  heads  of  your  reapers, "  replied  the  Earl. 
Hampered  by  the  profusion  of  the  court  and  the  refusal  of 
supplies,  the  Crown  was  in  fact  penniless ;  and  yet  never 
was  money  more  wanted,  for  a  trouble  which  had  long 
pressed  upon  the  English  kings  had  now  grown  to  a  height 
that  called  for  decisive  action.  Even  his  troubles  at  home 
could  not  blind  Henry  to  the  need  of  dealing  with  the  difii- 
culty  of  Wales.  Of  the  three  Welsh  states  into  which  all 
that  remained  unconquered  of  Britain  had  been  broken  by 
the  victories  of  Deorham  and  Chester,  two  had  long  ceased 
to  exist.  The  country  between  the  Clyde  and  the  Dee  had 
been  gradually  absorbed  by  the  conquests  of  Northumbria 
and  the  growth  of  the  Scot  monarchy.  West  Wales,  be- 
tween the  British  Channel  and  the  estuary  of  the  Severn, 
had  yielded  to  the  sword  of  Ecgberht.  But  a  fiercer  re- 
sistance prolonged  the  independence  of  the  great  central 
portion  which  alone  in  modern  language  preserves  the  name 
of  Wales.  Comprising  in  itself  the  largest  and  most  pow- 
erful of  the  British  kingdoms,  it  was  aided  in  its  struggle 
against  Mercia  by  the  weakness  of  its  assailant,  the  young- 
est and  feeblest  of  the  English  States,  as  well  as  by  an  in- 
ternal warfare  which  distracted  the  energies  of  the  invad- 
ers. But  Mercia  had  no  sooner  risen  to  supremacy  among 
the  English  kingdoms  than  it  took  the  work  of  conquest 
vigorously  in  hand.  Offa  tore  from  Wales  the  borderland 
between  the  Severn  and  the  Wye ;  the  raids  of  his  success- 
ors carried  fire  and  sword  into  the  heart  of  the  country; 
and  an  acknowledgment  of  the  Mercian  over-lordship  was 
wrested  from  the  Welsh  princes.  On  the  fall  of  Mercia 
this  overlordship  passed  to  the  West-Saxon  kings,  and  the 
Laws  of  Howel  Dda  own  the  payment  of  a  yearly  tribute 
by  "the  prince  of  Aberffraw"  to  "the  King  of  London." 
The  weakness  of  England  during  her  long  struggle  with 
Vol.  I.— 19 


290  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IH. 

the  Danes  revived  the  hopes  of  British  independence;  i\ 
was  the  co-operation  of  the  Welsh  on  which  the  Northmen 
reckoned  in  their  attack  on  the  house  of  Ecgberht.  But 
with  the  fall  of  the  Danelagh  the  British  princes  were 
again  brought  to  submission,  and  when  in  the  midst  of  the 
Confessor's  reign  the  Welsh  seized  on  a  quarrel  between 
the  houses  of  Leof  ric  and  God  wine  to  cross  the  border  and 
carry  their  attacks  into  England  itself,  the  victories  of 
Harold  reasserted  the  English  supremacy.  Disembark- 
ing on  the  coast  his  light-armed  troops  he  penetrated  to 
the  heart  of  the  mountains,  and  the  successors  of  the  Welsh 
prince  Gruffydd,  whose  head  was  the  trophy  of  the  cam- 
paign, swore  to  observe  the  old  fealty  and  render  the 
whole  tribute  to  the  English  crown. 

A  far  more  desperate  struggle  began  when  the  wave  of 
Norman  conquest  broke  on  the  Welsh  frontier.  A  chain 
of  great  earldoms,  settled  by  William  along  the  border- 
land, at  once  bridled  the  old  marauding  forays.  From  his 
county  palatine  of  Chester  Hugh  the  Wolf  harried  Flint- 
shire into  a  desert.  Robert  of  Belesme  in  his  earldom  of 
Shrewsbury  "slew  the  Welsh,"  says  a  chronicler,  "like 
sheep,  conquered  them,  enslaved  them  and  flayed  them  with 
nails  of  iron."  The  earldom  of  Gloucester  curbed  Britain 
along  the  lower  Severn.  Backed  by  these  greater  baronies 
a  horde  of  lesser  adventurers  obtained  the  royal  "  license 
to  make  conquest  on  the  W^elsh. "  Monmouth  and  Aberga- 
venny were  seized  and  guarded  by  Norman  castellans; 
Bernard  of  Neuf marche  won  the  lordship  of  Brecknock ; 
Roger  of  Montgomery  raised  the  town  and  fortress  in  Po- 
W3'sland  which  still  preserves  his  name.  A  great  rising  of 
the  whole  people  in  the  days  of  the  second  William  won 
back  some  of  this  Norman  spoil.  The  new  castle  of  Mont- 
gomery was  burned,  Brecknock  and  Cardigan  were  cleared 
of  the  invaders,  and  the  Welsh  poured  ravaging  over  the 
English  border.  Twice  the  Red  King  carried  his  arms 
fruitlessly  among  the  mountains  against  enemies  who  took 
refuge  in  their  fastnesses  till  famine  and  hardship  drove 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  291 

his  broken  host  into  retreat.  The  wiser  policy  of  Henry 
the  First  fell  back  on  his  father's  system  of  gradual  con- 
quest. A  new  tide  of  invasion  flowed  along  the  southern 
coast,  where  the  land  was  level  and  open  and  accessible 
from  the  sea.  The  attack  was  aided  bj^  strife  in  the  country 
itself.  Robert  Fitz-Hamo,  the  lord  of  Gloucester,  was  sum- 
moned to  his  aid  by  a  Welsh  chieftain ;  and  his  defeat  of 
Rhys  ap  Tewdor,  the  last  prince  under  whom  Southern 
Wales  was  united,  produced  an  anarchy  which  enabled 
Robert  to  land  safely  on  the  coast  of  Glamorgan,  to  conquer 
the  country  round,  and  to  divide  it  among  his  soldiers.  A 
force  of  Flemings  and  Englishmen  followed  the  Earl  of 
Clare  as  he  landed  near  Milford  Haven  and  pushing  back 
the  British  inhabitants  settled  a  "  Little  England"  in  the 
present  Pembrokeshire.  A  few  daring  adventurers  ac- 
companied the  Norman  Lord  of  Kemeys  into  Cardigan, 
where  land  might  be  had  for  the  winning  by  any  one  who 
would  "wage  war  on  the  Welsh." 

It  was  at  this  moment,  when  the  utter  subjugation  of 
the  British  race  seemed  at  hand,  that  a  new  outburst 
of  energy  roiled  back  the  tide  of  invasion  and  changed  the 
fitful  resistance  of  the  separate  Welsh  provinces  into  a 
national  effort  to  regain  independence.  To  all  outer  seem- 
ing Wales  had  become  utterly  barbarous.  Stripped  of 
every  vestige  of  the  older  Roman  civilization  by  ages  of 
bitter  warfare,  of  civil  strife,  of  estrangement  from  the 
general  culture  of  Christendom,  the  unconquered  Britons 
had  sunk  into  a  mass  of  savage  herdsmen,  clad  in  the  skins 
and  fed  by  the  milk  of  the  cattle  they  tended.  Faithless, 
greedy,  and  revengeful,  retaining  no  higher  political  or- 
ganization than  that  of  the  clan,  their  strength  was  broken 
by  ruthless  feuds,  and  they  were  united  only  in  battle  or 
in  raid  against  the  stranger  But  in  the  heart  of  the  wild 
people  there  still  lingered  a  spark  of  the  poetic  fire  which 
had  nerved  it  four  hundred  years  before  through  Aneurin 
and  Lly  warch  Hen  to  its  struggle  with  the  earliest  Eng- 
lishmen.    At  the  hour  of  its  lowest  degradation  the  silence 


293  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

of  Wales  was  suddenly  broken  by  a  crowd  of  singers.  The 
Bong  of  the  twelfth  century  burst  forth,  not  from  one  bard 
or  another,  but  from  the  nation  at  large.  The  Welsh 
temper  indeed  was  steeped  in  poetry.  "  In  every  house," 
says  the  shrewd  Gerald  du  Barri,  "  strangers  who  arrived 
in  the  i.^orning  were  entertained  till  eventide  with  the  talk 
of  maidens  and  the  music  of  the  harp."  A  romantic  lit- 
erature, which  was  destined  to  leaven  the  fancy  of  Western 
Europe,  had  grown  up  among  this  wild  people  and  found 
an  admirable  means  of  utterance  in  its  tongue.  The  Welsh 
language  was  as  real  a  development  of  the  old  Celtic  Ian 
guage  heard  by  Csesar  as  the  Romance  tongues  are  devel- 
opments of  Caesar's  Latin,  but  at  a  far  earlier  date  than 
any  other  language  of  modern  Europe  it  had  attained  to 
definite  structure  and  to  settled  literary  form.  No  other 
mediaeval  literature  shows  at  its  outset  the  same  elaborate 
and  completed  organization  as  that  of  the  Welsh.  But 
within  these  settled  forms  the  Celtic  fancy  played  with  a 
startling  freedom.  In  one  of  the  later  poems  Gwion  the 
Little  transforms  himself  into  a  hare,  a  fish,  a  bird,  a  grain 
of  wheat ;  but  he  is  only  the  symbol  of  the  strange  shapes 
in  which  the  Celtic  fancy  embodies  itself  in  the  romantic 
tales  which  reached  their  highest  perfection  in  the  legends 
of  Arthur. 

The  gay  extravagance  of  these  "  Mabinogion"  flings  de- 
fiance to  all  fact,  tradition,  probability,  and  revels  in  the  im- 
possible and  unreal.  When  Arthur  sails  into  the  unknown 
world  it  is  in  a  ship  of  glass.  The  "  descent  into  hell,"  as 
a  Celtic  poet  paints  it,  shakes  off  the  mediaeval  horror 
with  the  mediaeval  reverence,  and  the  knight  who 
achieves  the  quest  spends  his  years  of  infernal  du- 
rance in  hunting  and  minstrelsy,  and  in  converse  with 
fair  women.  The  world  of  the  Mabinogion  is  a  world 
of  pure  fantasy,  a  new  earth  of  marvels  and  enchant- 
ments, of  dark  forests  whose  silence  is  broken  by  the  her- 
mit's bell  and  sunny  glades  where  the  light  pla.ys  on  tho 
hero's  armor.     Each  figure  as  it  moves  across  the  poet's 


CbxP.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  293 


canvas  is  bright  with  glancing  color.  "  The  maiden  was 
clothed  in  a  robe  of  flame-colored  silk,  and  about  her  neck 
was  a  collar  of  ruddy  gold  in  which  were  precious  emer- 
alds and  rubies.  Her  head  was  of  brighter  gold  than  the 
flower  of  the  broom,  her  skin  was  whiter  than  the  foam 
of  the  wave,  and  fairer  were  her  hands  and  her  fingers 
than  the  blossoms  of  the  wood-anemone  amid  the  spray  of 
the  meadow  fountain.  The  eye  of  the  trained  hawk,  the 
glance  of  the  falcon,  was  not  brighter  than  hers.  Her 
bosom  was  more  snowy  than  the  breast  of  the  white  swan, 
her  cheek  was  redder  than  the  reddest  roses."  Every- 
where there  is  an  Oriental  profusion  of  gorgeous  imagery, 
but  the  gorgeousness  is  seldom  oppressive.  The  sensibil- 
ity of  the  Celtic  temper,  so  quick  to  perceive  beauty,  so 
eager  in  its  thirst  for  life,  its  emotions,  its  adventures,  its 
sorrows,  its  joys,  is  tempered  by  a  passionate  melancholy 
that  expresses  its  revolt  against  the  impossible,  by  an  in- 
stinct of  what  is  noble,  by  a  sentiment  that  discovers  the 
weird  charm  of  nature.  The  wildest  extravagance  of  the 
tale-teller  is  relieved  by  some  graceful  play  of  pure  fancy, 
some  tender  note  of  feeling,  some  magical  touch  of  beauty. 
As  Kalweb's  greyhounds  bound  from  side  to  side  of  their 
master's  steed,  they  "  sport  round  him  like  two  sea-swal- 
lows." His  spear  is  "swifter  than  the  fall  of  the  dew- 
drop  from  the  blade  of  reed-grass  upon  the  earth  when  the 
dew  of  June  is  at  the  heaviest. "  A  subtle,  observant  love 
of  nature  and  natural  beauty  takes  fresh  color  from  the 
passionate  human  sentiment  with  which  it  is  imbued.  "  I 
love  the  birds,"  sings  Gwalchmai,  "and  their  sweet  voices 
in  the  lulling  songs  of  the  wood ;"  he  watches  at  night  be- 
side the  fords  "  among  the  untrodden  grass"  to  hear  the 
nightingale  and  watch  the  play  of  the  sea-mew.  Even 
patriotism  takes  the  same  picturesque  form.  The  Welsh 
poet  hates  the  flat  and  sluggish  land  of  the  Saxon ;  as  he 
dwells  on  his  own  he  tells  of  "  its  sea-coast  and  its  moun- 
tains, its  towns  on  the  forest  border,  its  fair  landscape,  its 
dales,  its  waters,  and  its  valleys,  its  white  sea-mews,  its 


294  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III 


beauteous  women."  Here  as  everywhere  the  sentiment  of 
nature  passes  swiftly  and  subtly  into  the  sentiment  of  a 
human  tenderness :  "  I  love  its  fields  clothed  with  tender 
trefoil,"  goes  on  the  song;  "  I  love  the  marches  of  Merion- 
eth where  m}'  head  was  pillowed  on  a  snow-white  arm." 
In  the  Celtic  love  of  woman  there  is  little  of  the  Teutonic 
depth  and  earnestness,  but  in  its  stead  a  childlike  spirit  of 
delicate  enjoyment,  a  faint  distant  flush  of  passion  like 
the  rose-light  of  dawn  on  a  snowy  mountain  peak,  a  play- 
ful delight  in  beauty.  "  White  is  my  love  as  the  apple  blos- 
som, as  the  ocean's  spray ;  her  face  shines  like  the  pearly 
dew  on  Eryri ;  the  glow  of  her  cheeks  is  like  the  light  of 
sunset."  The  buoyant  and  elastic  temper  of  the  French 
trouveur  was  spiritualized  in  the  Welsh  singers  by  a  more 
refined  poetic  feeling.  "  Whoso  beheld  her  was  filled  with 
her  love.  Four  white  trefoils  sprang  up  wherever  she 
trod."  A  touch  of  pure  fancy  such  as  this  removes  its  ob- 
ject out  of  the  sphere  of  passion  into  one  of  delight  and 
reverence. 

It  is  strange  to  pass  from  the  world  of  actual  Welsh  his- 
tory into  such  a  world  as  this.  But  side  by  side  with  this 
wayward,  fanciful  stream  of  poesy  and  romance  ran  a 
torrent  of  intenser  song.  The  spirit  of  the  earlier  bards, 
their  joy  in  battle,  their  love  of  freedom,  broke  out  anew 
in  ode  after  ode,  in  songs  extravagant,  monotonous,  often 
prosaic,  but  fused  into  poetry  by  the  intense  fire  of  patri- 
otism which  glowed  within  them.  Every  fight,  every 
hero  had  its  verse.  The  names  of  older  singers,  of  Talie- 
sin,  Aneurin,  and  Llywarch  Hen,  were  revived  in  bold 
forgeries  to  animate  the  national  resistance  and  to  proph- 
esy victory.  It  was  in  North  Wales  that  the  spirit  of  pa- 
triotism received  its  strongest  inspiration  from  this  burst 
of  song.  Again  and  again  Henry  the  Second  was  driven 
to  retreat  from  the  impregnable  fastnesses  where  the  "  Lords 
of  Snowdon,"  the  princes  of  the  house  of  Gruffydd  ap 
Conan,  claimed  supremacy  over  the  whole  of  Wales. 
Once  in  the  pass  of  Consilt  a  cry  arose  that  the  King  was 


Chap.  8.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1391.  295 

slain,  Henry  of  Essex  flung  down  the  royal  standard,  and 
the  King's  desperate  efforts  could  hardly  save  his  army 
from  utter  rout.  The  bitter  satire  of  the  Welsh  singers 
bade  him  knight  his  horse,  since  its  speed  had  alone  saved, 
him  from  capture.  In  a  later  campaign  the  invaders  were 
met  by  storms  of  rain,  and  forced  to  abandon  their  bag 
gage  in  a  headlong  flight  to  Chester.  The  greatest  of  the 
Welsh  odes,  that  known  to  English  readers  in  Gray's  trans- 
lation as  "The  Triumph  of  Owen,"  is  Gwalchmai's  song 
of  victory  over  the  repulse  of  an  English  fleet  from  Aber- 
menai. 

The  long  reign  of  Llewelyn,  the  son  of  Jorwerth,  seemed 
destined  to  realize  the  hopes  of  his  countrymen.  The  hom- 
age which  he  succeeded  in  extorting  from  the  whole  of  the 
Welsh  chieftains  during  a  reign  which  lasted  from  1194 
to  1240  placed  him  openly  at  the  head  of  his  race,  and 
gave  a  new  character  to  its  struggle  with  the  English 
King.  In  consolidating  his  authority  within  his  own  do- 
mains, and  in  the  assertion  of  his  lordship  over  the  princes 
of  the  south,  Llewelyn  ap  Jorwerth  aimed  steadily  at  se- 
curing the  means  of  striking  off  the  yoke  of  the  Saxon. 
It  was  in  vain  that  John  strove  to  buy  his  friendship  by 
the  hand  of  his  natural  daughter  Johanna.  Fresh  raids 
on  the  Marches  forced  the  King  to  enter  Wales  in  1211; 
but  though  his  army  reached  Snowdon  it  fell  back  like  its 
predecessors,  starved  and  broken  before  an  enemy  it  could 
never  reach.  A  second  attack  in  the  same  j^ear  had  better 
success.  The  chieftains  of  South  Wales  were  drawn  from 
their  new  allegiance  to  join  the  English  forces,  and 
Llewelyn,  prisoned  in  his  fastnesses,  was  at  last  driven  to 
submit.  But  the  ink  of  the  treaty  was  hardly  dry  before 
Wales  was  again  on  fire ;  a  common  fear  of  the  English 
once  more  united  its  chieftains,  and  the  war  between  John 
and  his  barons  soon  removed  all  dread  of  a  new  invasion. 
Absolved  from  his  allegiance  to  an  excommunicated  King, 
and  allied  with  the  barons  under  Fitzwalter — too  glad  to 
enlist  in  their  cause  a  prince  who  could  hold  in  check  the 


:!9G  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 


nobles  of  the  border  country  where  the  royalist  cause  was 
strongest — Llewelyn  seized  his  opportunity  to  reduce 
Shrewsbur}',  to  annex  Powys,  the  central  district  of  Wales 
where  the  English  influence  had  always  been  powerful, 
to  clear  the  royal  garrisons  from  Caermarthen  and  Cardi- 
gan, and  to  force  even  the  Flemings  of  Pembroke  to  do 
him  homage. 

England  watched  these  efforts  of  the  subject  race  with 
an  anger  still  mingled  with  contempt.  "  Who  knows  not," 
exclaims  Matthew  Paris  as  he  dwells  on  the  new  preten- 
sions of  the  Welsh  ruler,  "  who  knows  not  that  the  Prince 
of  Wales  is  a  petty  vassal  of  the  King  of  England?"  But 
the  temper  of  Llewelyn's  own  people  was  far  other  than 
the  temper  of  the  English  chronicler.  The  hopes  of  Wales 
rose  higher  and  higher  with  each  triumph  of  the  Lord  of 
Snowdon.  His  court  was  crowded  with  bardic  singers. 
"  He  pours,"  sings  one  of  them,  "his  gold  into  the  lap  of 
the  bard  as  the  ripe  fruit  falls  from  the  trees."  Gold 
however  was  hardly  needed  to  wake  their  enthusiasm. 
Poet  after  poet  sang  of  "the  Devastator  of  England,"  the 
"Eagle  of  men  that  loves  not  to  lie  nor  sleep,"  "towering 
above  the  rest  of  men  with  his  long  red  lance,"  his  "red 
helmet  of  battle  crested  with  a  fierce  wolf. "  "  The  sound 
of  his  coming  is  like  the  roar  of  the  wave  as  it  rushes  to 
the  shore,  that  can  neither  be  stayed  nor  hushed."  Lesser 
bards  strung  together  Llewelyn's  victories  in  rough  jingle 
of  rhyme  and  hounded  him  on  to  the  slaughter.  "  Be  of 
good  courage  in  the  slaughter,"  sings  Elidir;  "cling  to  thy 
work,  destroy  England,  and  plunder  its  multitudes."  A 
fierce  thirst  for  blood  runs  through  the  abrupt  passionate 
verses  of  the  court  singers.  "Swansea,  that  tranquil 
town,  was  broken  in  heaps,"  bursts  out  a  triumphant 
bard;  "St.  Clears,  with  its  bright  white  lands,  it  is  not 
Saxons  who  hold  it  now!"  "In  Swansea,  the  key  of 
Lloegria,  we  made  widows  of  all  the  wives."  "  The  dread 
Eagle  is  wont  to  lay  corpses  in  rows,  and  to  feast  with  the 
leader  of  wolves  and  with  hovering  ravens  glutted  with 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  297 

flesh,  butchers  with  keen  scent  of  carcasses."  "Better," 
closes  the  song,  "  better  the  grave  than  the  life  of  man 
who  sighs  when  the  horns  call  him  forth  to  the  squares  of 
battle." 

But  even  in  bardic  verse  Llewelyn  rises  high  out  of  the 
mere  mob  of  chieftains  who  live  by  rapine,  and  boast  as 
the  Hirlas-horn  passes  from  hand  to  hand  through  the  hall 
that  " they  take  and  give  no  quarter."  "Tender-hearted, 
wise,  witty,  ingenious,"  he  was  "the  great  Csesar"  who 
was  to  gather  beneath  his  sway  the  broken  fragments  of 
the  Celtic  race.  Mysterious  prophecies,  the  prophecies  of 
Merlin  the  Wise  which  floated  from  lip  to  lip  and  were 
heard  even  along  the  Seine  and  the  Rhine,  came  home 
again  to  nerve  Wales  to  its  last  struggle  with  the  stranger. 
Medrawd  and  Arthur,  men  whispered,  would  appear  once 
more  on  earth  to  fight  over  again  the  fatal  battle  of  Camlan 
in  which  the  hero-king  perished.  The  last  conqueror  of 
the  Celtic  race,  Cadwallon,  still  lived  to  combat  for  his 
people.  The  supposed  verses  of  Taliesin  expressed  the  un- 
dying hope  of  a  restoration  of  the  Cymry.  "  In  their  hands 
shall  be  all  the  land  from  Brittany  to  Man :  .  .  .  a  rumor 
shall  arise  that  the  Germans  are  moving  out  of  Britain 
back  again  to  their  fatherland."  Gathered  up  in  the 
strange  work  of  Geoff ry  of  Monmouth,  these  predictions 
had  long  been  making  a  deep  impression  not  on  Wales 
only  but  on  its  conquerors.  It  was  to  meet  the  dreams  of 
a  yet  living  Arthur  that  the  grave  of  the  legendary  hero- 
king  at  Glastonbury  was  found  and  visited  by  Henry  the 
Second.  But  neither  trick  nor  conquest  could  shake  the 
firm  faith  of  the  Celt  in  the  ultimate  victory  of  his  race. 
"  Think  you,"  said  Henry  to  a  Welsh  chieftain  who  joined 
his  host,  "  that  your  people  of  rebels  can  withstand  my 
army?"  "My  people,"  replied  the  chieftain,  "may  be 
weakened  by  your  might,  and  even  in  great  part  destroyed, 
but  unless  the  wrath  of  God  be  on  the  side  of  its  foe  it 
will  not  perish  utterly.  Nor  deem  I  that  other  race  or 
other  tongue  will  answer  for  this  corner  of  the  world  be- 


tOS  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPI.E.     [Book  III, 

fore  the  Judge  of  all  at  the  last  day  save  this  people  and 
tongue  of  Wales."  So  ran  the  popular  rhyme,  "  Their  Lord 
they  will  praise,  their  speech  they  shall  keep,  their  land 
they  shall  lose — except  wild  Wales." 

Faith  and  prophecy  seemed  justified  by  the  growing 
strength  of  the  British  people.  The  weakness  and  dissen- 
sions which  characterized  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Third 
enabled  Llewelyn  ap  Jorwerth  to  preserve  a  practical  inde- 
pendence till  the  close  of  his  life,  when  a  fresh  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  English  supremacy  was  wrested  from  him  by 
Archbishop  Edmund.  But  the  triumphs  of  his  arms  were 
renewed  by  Llewelyn,  the  son  of  Gryffydd,  who  followed 
him  in  1246.  The  raids  of  the  new  chieftain  swept  the 
border  to  the  very  gates  of  Chester,  while  his  conquest  of 
Glamorgan  seemed  to  bind  the  whole  people  together  in  a 
power  strong  enough  to  meet  any  attack  from  the  stranger. 
So  pressing  was  the  danger  that  it  called  the  King's  eldest 
son,  Edward,  to  the  field;  but  his  first  appearance  in  arms 
ended  in  a  crushing  defeat.  The  defeat  however  remained 
unavenged.  Henry's  dreams  were  of  mightier  enterprises 
than  the  reduction  of  the  Welsh.  The  Popes  were  still 
fighting  their  weary  battle  against  the  House  of  Hohen- 
staufen,  and  were  offering  its  kingdom  of  Sicily,  which 
they  regarded  as  a  forfeited  fief  of  the  Holy  See,  to  any 
power  that  would  aid  them  in  the  struggle.  In  1254  it 
was  offered  to  the  King's  second  son,  Edmund.  With 
imbecile  pride  Henry  accepted  the  offer,  prepared  to  send 
an  army  across  the  Alps,  and  pledged  England  to  repay 
the  sums  which  the  Pope  was  borrowing  for  the  purposes 
of  his  war.  In  a  Parliament  at  the  opening  of  1257  he 
demanded  an  aid  and  a  tenth  from  the  clergy.  A  fresh 
demand  was  made  in  1258.  But  the  patience  of  the  realm 
was  at  last  exhausted.  Earl  Simon  had  returned  in  1253 
from  his  government  of  Gascony,  and  the  fruit  of  his  med- 
itations during  the  four  years  of  his  quiet  stay  at  home,  a 
quiet  broken  only  by  short  embassies  to  France  and  Scot- 
land which  showed  there  was  as  yet  no  open  quarrel  with 


Chap.  3.  J  THF  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  299 


Henry,  was  seen  in  a  league  of  the  baronage  and  in  their 
adoption  of  a  new  and  startling  policy.  The  past  half 
century  had  shown  both  the  strength  and  weakness  of  the 
Charter :  its  strength  as  a  rallying-point  for  the  baronage 
and  a  definite  assertion  of  rights  which  the  King  could  be 
made  to  acknowledge ;  its  weakness  in  providing  no  means 
for  the  enforcement  of  its  own  stipulations.  Henry  had 
sworn  again  and  again  to  observe  the  Charter,  and  his 
oath  was  no  sooner  taken  than  it  was  unscrupulously 
broken.  The  barons  had  secured  the  freedom  of  the 
realm ;  the  secret  of  their  long  patience  during  the  reign 
of  Henry  lay  in  the  difficulty  of  securing  its  right  admin- 
istration. It  was  this  difficulty  which  Earl  Simon  was 
prepared  to  solve  when  action  was  forced  on  him  by  the 
stir  of  the  realm.  A  great  famine  added  to  the  sense  of 
danger  from  Wales  and  from  Scotland  and  to  the  irrita- 
tion at  the  new  demands  from  both  Henry  and  Rome  with 
which  the  year  1258  opened.  It  was  to  arrange  for  a  cam- 
paign against  Wales  that  Henry  called  a  parliament  in 
April.  But  the  baronage  appeared  in  arms,  with  Glouces- 
ter and  Leicester  at  their  head.  The  King  was  forced  to 
consent  to  the  appointment  of  a  committee  of  twenty-four 
to  draw  up  terms  for  the  reform  of  the  state.  The  Twenty- 
four  again  met  the  Parliament  at  Oxford  in  June,  and 
although  half  the  committee  consisted  of  royal  ministers 
and  favorites  it  was  impossible  to  resist  the  tide  of  popular 
feeling.  Hugh  Bigod,  one  of  the  firmest  adherents  of  the 
two  Earls,  was  chosen  as  Justiciar.  The  claim  to  elect 
this  great  officer  was  in  fact  the  leading  point  in  the  baro- 
nial policy.  But  further  measures  were  needed  to  hold  in 
check  such  arbitrary  misgovernment  as  had  prevailed  dur- 
ing the  past  twenty  years.  By  the  "  Provisions  of  Oxford" 
it  was  agreed  that  the  Great  Council  should  assemble  thrice 
in  the  year,  whether  summoned  by  the  King  or  no ;  and 
on  each  occasion  "the  Commonalty  shall  elect  twelve 
honest  men  who  shall  come  to  the  Parliaments,  and  at 
.other  times  when  occasion  shall  be  when  the  King  and  hia 


300  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  in. 

Council  shall  send  for  them,  to  treat  of  the  wants  of  the 
King  and  of  his  kingdom.  And  the  Commonalty  shall 
hold  as  established  that  which  these  Twelve  shall  do." 
Three  permanent  committees  of  barons  and  prelates  were 
named  to  carry  out  the  work  of  reform  and  administration. 
The  reform  of  the  Church  was  left  to  the  original  Twenty- 
four  ;  a  second  Twenty-four  negotiated  the  financial  aids ; 
a  Permanent  Council  of  Fifteen  advised  the  King  in  the 
ordinary  work  of  Government.  The  complexity  of  such 
an  arrangement  was  relieved  by  the  fact  that  the  members 
of  each  of  these  committees  were  in  great  part  the  same 
persons.  The  Justiciar,  Chancellor,  and  the  guardians  of 
the  King's  castles  swore  to  act  only  with  the  advice  and 
assent  of  the  Permanent  Council,  and  the  first  two  great 
officers,  with  the  Treasurer,  were  to  give  account  of  their 
proceedings  to  it  at  the  end  of  the  year.  Sheriffs  were  to 
be  appointed  for  a  single  year  only,  no  doubt  by  the  Coun- 
cil, from  among  the  chief  tenants  of  the  county,  and  no 
undue  fees  were  to  be  exacted  for  the  administration  of 
justice  in  their  court. 

A  royal  proclamation  in  the  English  tongue,  the  first  in 
that  tongue  since  the  Conquest  which  has  reached  us, 
ordered  the  observance  of  these  Provisions.  The  King 
was  in  fact  helpless,  and  resistance  came  only  from  the 
foreign  favorites,  who  refused  to  surrender  the  castles  and 
honors  which  had  been  granted  to  them.  But  the  Twenty- 
four  were  resolute  in  their  action ;  and  an  armed  demon- 
stration of  the  barons  drove  the  foreigners  in  flight  over 
sea.  The  whole  royal  power  was  now  in  fact  in  the  hands 
of  the  committees  appointed  by  the  Great  Council.  But 
the  measures  of  the  barons  showed  little  of  the  wisdom 
and  energy  which  the  country  had  hoped  for.  In  October, 
1259,  the  knighthood  complained  that  the  barons  had  done 
nothing  but  seek  their  own  advantage  in  the  recent 
changes.  This  protest  produced  the  Provisions  of  West- 
minster, which  gave  protection  to  tenants  against  their 
feudal  lords»  regulated  legal  procedure  in  the  feudal  courts. 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  301 

appointed  four  knights  in  each  shire  to  watch  the  justice 
of  the  sheriffs,  and  made  other  temporary  enactments  for 
the  furtherance  of  justice.  But  these  Provisions  brought 
little  fruit,  and  a  tendency  to  mere  feudal  privilege  showed 
itself  in  an  exemption  of  all  nobles  and  prelates  from  at- 
tendance at  the  Sheriff's  courts.  Their  foreign  policy  was 
more  vigorous  and  successful.  All  further  payment  to 
Rome,  whether  secular  or  ecclesiastical,  was  prohibited; 
formal  notice  was  given  to  the  Pope  of  England's  with- 
drawal from  the  Sicilian  enterprise,  peace  put  an  end  to 
the  incursions  of  the  Welsh,  and  negotiations  on  the  foot- 
ing of  a  formal  abandonment  of  the  King's  claim  to  Nor- 
mandy, Anjou,  Maine,  Touraine,  and  Poitou  ended  in 
October,  1259,  in  a  peace  with  France. 

This  peace,  the  triumph  of  that  English  policy  which 
had  been  struggling  ever  since  the  days  of  Hubert  de 
Burgh  with  the  Continental  policy  of  Henry  and  his  for- 
eign advisers,  was  the  work  of  the  Earl  of  Leicester.  The 
revolution  had  doubtless  been  mainly  Simon's  doing.  In 
the  summer  of  1258,  while  the  great  change  was  going 
on,  a  thunder-storm  drove  the  King  as  he  passed  along 
the  river  to  the  house  of  the  Bishop  of  Durham  where  the 
Earl  was  then  sojourning.  Simon  bade  Henry  take  shel- 
ter with  him  and  have  no  fear  of  the  storm.  The  King 
refused  with  petulant  wit,  "  If  I  fear  the  thunder,  I  fear 
you,  Sir  Earl,  more  than  all  the  thunder  in  the  world." 
But  Simon  had  probably  small  faith  in  the  cumbrous  sys- 
tem of  government  which  the  Barons  devised,  and  it  was 
with  reluctance  that  he  was  brought  to  swear  to  the  Pro- 
visions of  Oxford  which  embodied  it.  With  their  home 
government  he  had  little  to  do,  for  from  the  autumn  of 
1258  to  that  of  1250  he  was  chiefly  busied  in  negotiation 
in  France.  But  already  his  breach  with  Gloucester  and 
the  bulk  of  his  fellow-councillors  was  marked.  In  the 
Lent  Parliament  of  1259  he  had  reproached  them,  and 
Gloucester  above  all,  with  faithlessness  to  their  trust. 
"  The  things  we  are  treating  of,"  he  cried,  "  we  have  sworn 


303  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

to  carry  out.  With  such  feeble  and  faithless  men  I  care 
not  to  have  aught  to  do !"  The  peace  with  France  was 
hardly  signed  when  his  distrust  of  his  colleagues  was 
verified.  Henry's  withdrawal  to  the  French  court  at  the 
close  of  the  year  for  the  formal  signature  of  the  treaty  was 
the  signal  for  a  reactionary  movement.  From  France  the 
King  forbade  the  summoning  of  a  Lent  Parliament  in 
12G0  and  announced  his  resumption  of  the  enterprise 
against  Sicily.  Both  acts  were  distinct  breaches  of  the 
Provisions  of  Oxford,  but  Henry  trusted  to  the  divisions 
of  the  Twenty-four.  Gloucester  was  in  open  feud  with 
Leicester;  the  Justiciar,  Hugh  Bigod,  resigned  his  office 
in  the  spring ;  and  both  of  these  leaders  drew  cautiously 
to  the  King.  Roger  Mortimer  and  the  Earls  of  Hereford 
and  Norfolk  more  openly  espoused  the  royal  cause,  and  in 
February,  1260,  Henry  had  gained  confidence  enough  to 
announce  that  as  the  barons  had  failed  to  keep  their  part 
of  the  Provisions  he  should  not  keep  his. 

Earl  Simon  almost  alone  remained  unshaken.  But  his 
growing  influence  was  seen  in  the  appointment  of  his  sup- 
porter, Hugh  Despenser,  as  Justiciar  in  Bigod's  place, 
while  his  strength  was  doubled  by  the  accession  of  the 
King's  son  Edward  to  his  side.  In  the  moment  of  the 
revolution  Edward  had  vehemently  supported  the  party  of 
the  foreigners.  But  he  had  sworn  to  observe  the  Provi- 
sions, and  the  fidelity  to  his  pledge  which  remained 
throughout  his  life  the  chief  note  of  his  temper  at  once 
showed  itself.  Like  Simon  he  protested  against  the  faith- 
lessness of  the  barons  in  the  carrying  out  of  their  reforms, 
and  it  was  his  strenuous  support  of  the  petition  of  the 
knighthood  that  brought  about  the  additional  Provisions 
of  1259.  He  had  been  brought  up  with  Earl  Simon's  sons, 
and  with  the  Earl  himself  his  relations  remained  friendly 
even  at  the  later  time  of  their  fatal  hostilities.  But  as 
yet  he  seems  to  have  had  no  distrust  of  Simon's  purposes 
or  policy.  His  adhesion  to  the  Earl  recalled  Henry  from 
France ;  and  the  King  was  at  once  joined  by  Gloucester 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  303 

in  London  while  Edward  and  Simon  remained  without  the 
walls.  But  the  love  of  father  and  son  proved  too  strong 
to  bear  political  severance,  and  Edward's  reconciliation 
foiled  the  Earl's  plans.  He  withdrew  to  the  Welsh  border, 
where  fresh  troubles  were  breaking  out,  while  Henry  pre- 
pared to  deal  his  final  blow  at  the  government  which,  tot-= 
taring  as  it  was,  still  held  him  in  check,  Rome  had  re- 
sented the  measures  which  had  put  an  end  to  her  extortions, 
and  it  was  to  Rome  that  Henry  looked  for  a  formal  ab- 
solution from  his  oath  to  observe  the  Provisions.  In 
June,  1261,  he  produced  a  Bull  annulling  the  Provisions 
and  freeing  him  from  his  oath  in  a  Parliament  at  Win- 
chester. The  suddenness  of  the  blow  forbade  open  protest 
and  Henry  quickly  followed  up  his  victory.  Hugh  Bigod, 
who  had  surrendered  the  Tower  and  Dover  in  the  spring, 
surrendered  the  other  castles  he  held  in  the  autumn.  Hugh 
Despenser  was  deposed  from  the  Justiciarship  and  a  roy- 
alist, Philip  Basset,  appointed  in  bis  place. 

The  news  of  this  counter-revolution  reunited  for  a  mo- 
ment the  barons.  Gloucester  joined  Earl  Simon  in  calling 
an  autumn  Parliament  at  St.  Alban's,  and  in  summoning 
to  it  three  knights  from  every  shire  south  of  Trent.  But 
the  union  was  a  brief  one.  Gloucester  consented  to  refer 
the  quarrel  with  the  King  to  arbitration  and  the  Earl  of 
Leicester  withdrew  in  August  to  France.  He  saw  that 
for  the  while  there  was  no  means  of  withstanding  Henry, 
even  in  his  open  defiance  of  the  Provisions.  Foreign  i^ol- 
diers  were  brought  into  the  land;  the  King  won  back 
again  the  appointment  of  sheriffs.  For  eighteen  months 
of  this  new  rule  Simon  could  do  nothing  but  wait.  But 
his  long  absence  lulled  the  old  jealousies  against  him. 
The  confusion  of  the  realm  and  a  fresh  outbreak  of  trou- 
bles in  Wales  renewed  the  disgust  at  Henry's  government, 
while  his  unswerving  faithfulness  to  the  Provisions  fixed 
the  eyes  of  all  Englishmen  upon  the  Earl  as  their  natural 
leader.  The  death  of  Gloucester  in  the  summer  of  12G2 
removed  the  one  barrier  to  action ;  and  in  the  spring  of 


30-lr  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IIL 


1263  Simon  landed  again  in  England  as  the  unquestioned 
head  of  the  baronial  party.  What  immediately  forced  him 
to  action  was  a  march  of  Edward  with  a  body  of  foreign 
troops  against  Llewelyn,  who  was  probably  by  this  time 
in  communication  if  not  in  actual  alliance  with  the  Earl. 
The  chief  opponents  of  Llewelyn  among  the  Marcher 
Lords  were  ardent  supporters  of  Henry's  misgovernment, 
and  when  a  common  hostility  drew  the  Prince  and  Earl 
together,  the  constitutional  position  of  Llewelyn  as  an 
English  noble  gave  formal  justification  for  co-operation 
with  him.  At  Whitsuntide  the  barons  met  Simon  at  Ox- 
ford and  finally  summoned  Henry  to  observe  the  Provi- 
sions. His  refusal  was  met  by  an  appeal  to  arms. 
Throughout  the  country  the  younger  nobles  flocked  to 
Simon's  standard,  and  the  young  Earl  of  Gloucester,  Gil- 
bert of  Clare,  became  his  warmest  supporter.  His  rapid 
movements  foiled  all  opposition.  While  Henry  vainly 
strove  to  raise  money  and  men,  Simon  swept  the  Welsh 
border,  marched  through  Reading  on  Dover,  and  finally 
appeared  before  London. 

The  Earl's  triumph  was  complete.  Edward  after  a 
brief  attempt  at  resistance  was  forced  to  surrender  Wind- 
sor and  disband  his  foreign  troops.  The  rising  of  London 
in  the  cause  of  the  barons  left  Henry  helpless.  But  at  the 
moment  of  triumph  the  Earl  saw  himself  anew  forsaken. 
The  bulk  of  the  nobles  again  drew  toward  the  King ;  only 
six  of  the  twelve  barons  who  had  formed  the  patriot  half 
of  the  committee  of  1258,  only  four  of  the  twelve  repre- 
sentatives of  the  community  at  that  date,  were  now  with 
the  Earl.  The  dread  too  of  civil  war  gave  strength  to  the 
cry  for  a  compromise,  and  at  the  end  of  the  year  it  was 
agreed  that  the  strife  should  be  left  to  the  arbitration  of 
the  French  King,  Lewis  the  Ninth.  But  saint  and  just 
ruler  as  he  was,  the  royal  power  was  in  the  conception  of 
Lewis  a  divine  thing,  which  no  human  power  could  limit 
or  fetter,  and  his  decision,  which  was  given  in  January, 
1264,   annulled  the  whole  of  the  Provisions.     Only  the 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  305 

Charters  granted  before  the  Provisions  were  to  be  ob- 
served. The  appointment  and  removal  of  all  officers  of 
state  was  to  be  wholly  with  the  King,  and  he  was  suffered 
to  call  aliens  to  his  councils  if  he  would.  The  Mise  of 
Amiens  was  at  once  confirmed  by  the  Pope,  and  crushing 
blow  as  it  was,  the  barons  felt  themselves  bound  by  the 
award.  It  was  only  the  exclusion  of  aliens — a  point 
which  they  had  not  purposed  to  submit  to  arbitration — 
which  they  refused  to  concede.  Luckily  Henry  was  as 
inflexible  on  this  point  as  on  the  rest,  and  the  mutual  dis- 
trust prevented  any  real  accommodation. 

But  Henry  had  to  reckon  on  more  than  the  baronage. 
Deserted  as  he  was  by  the  greater  nobles,  Simon  was  far 
from  standing  alone.  Throughout  the  recent  struggle  the 
new  city  governments  of  the  craft-guilds,  which  were 
known  by  the  name  of  "  Communes, "  had  shown  an  en- 
thusiastic devotion  to  his  cause.  The  Queen  was  stopped 
in  her  attempt  to  escape  from  the  Tower  by  an  angry  mob, 
who  drove  her  back  with  stones  and  foul  words.  When 
Henry  attempted  to  surprise  Leicester  in  his  quarters  at 
South wark,  the  Londoners  burst  the  gates  which  had  been 
locked  by  the  richer  burghers  against  him,  and  rescued 
him  by  a  welcome  into  the  city.  ,  The  clergy  and  the  uni- 
versities went  in  sympathy  with  the  towns,  and  in  spite 
of  the  taunts  of  the  royalists,  who  accused  him  of  seeking 
allies  against  the  nobility  in  the  common  people,  the  popu- 
lar enthusiasm  gave  a  strength  to  the  Earl  which  sustained 
him  even  in  this  darkest  hour  of  the  struggle.  He  at  once) 
resolved  on  resistance.  The  French  award  had  luckily 
reserved  the  rights  of  Englishmen  to  the  liberties  they  had 
enjoyed  before  the  Provisions  of  Oxford,  and  it  was  easy 
for  Simon  to  prove  that  the  arbitrary  power  it  gave  to  the 
Crown  was  as  contrary  to  the  Charter  as  to  the  Provisions 
themselves.  London  was  the  first  to  reject  the  decision ; 
in  March,  1264,  its  citizens  mustered  at  the  call  of  the 
town-bell  at  Saint  Paul's,  seized  the  royal  officials,  and 
plundered  the  royal  parks.  But  an  army  had  already 
Vol.  I.— 20 


306  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IH. 


mustered  in  great  force  at  the  King's  summons,  while 
Leicester  found  himself  deserted  bj'-  the  bulk  of  the  baron- 
age. Every  daj'  brought  news  of  ill.  A  detachment  from 
Scotland  joined  Heur^^'s  forces.  The  younger  De  Mont- 
fort  was  taken  prisoner.  Northampton  was  captured,  the 
King  raised  the  siege  of  Rochester,  and  a  rapid  march  of 
Earl  Simon's  onh*  saved  London  itself  from  a  surprise  by 
Edward.  But  betrayed  as  he  was,  the  Earl  remained 
firm  to  the  cause.  He  would  fight  to  the  end,  he  said, 
even  were  he  and  his  sons  left  to  fight  alone.  With  an 
army  reinforced  by  15,000  Londoners,  he  marched  in  May 
to  the  relief  of  the  Cinque  Ports  which  were  now  threat- 
ened by  the  King.  Even  on  the  march  he  was  forsaken 
by  many  of  the  nobles  who  follow^ed  him.  Halting  at 
Fletching  in  Sussex,  a  few  miles  from  Lewes,  w^here  the 
royal  army  was  encamped,  Earl  Simon  with  the  3'Oung 
Earl  of  Gloucester  offered  the  King  compensation  for  all 
damage  if  he  would  observe  the  Provisions.  Henry's 
answer  was  one  of  defiance,  and  though  numbers  were 
against  him,  the  Earl  resolved  on  battle.  His  skill  as  a 
soldier  reversed  the  advantages  of  the  ground;  marching 
at  dawn  on  the  llth  of  May  he  seized  the  heights  east- 
ward of  the  town  and  moved  down  these  slopes  to  an  at- 
tack. His  men  with  white  crosses  on  back  and  Keast 
knelt  in  prayer  before  the  battle  opened,  and  all  but  reached 
the  town  before  their  approach  was  perceived.  F-dward 
however  opened  the  fight  b}-  a  furious  charge  wi»L')i  broke 
the  Londoners  on  Leicester's  left.  In  the  bitterjiess  of  his 
hatred  for  the  insult  to  his  mother  he  piirsued  them  for 
four  miles,  slaughtering  three  thousand  men.  But  he  ro- 
turn.ed  to  find  the  battle  lost.  Cr...\\00(l  in  the  narro\f 
space  between  the  heights  and  c>.e  river  Ouse,  a  spaca 
broken  by  marshes  and  by  the  loug  street  of  the  town,  the 
royalist  centre  and  left  were  crushed  by  Earl  Simon.  The 
Earl  of  Cornwall,  now  King  of  the  Romans,  who,  as  the 
mocking  song  of  the  victors  ran,  "  makede  him  a  castel  of 
a  mulne  post"  ("  he  weened  that  the  will-sails  were  man- 


Chap.  3.j  tllE  CHATtTOR.    nOi—mn.  SO? 

j^ffiolH,"  goes  on  the  narcastio  verse),  was  takf^n  priHoner, 
and  Honry  hini.sfjif  captiirf;f].  P^dward  cut  his  way  into 
the  Priory  only  to  join  in  his  fatFior'.s  HUirend^jr. 

ni'hie  victory  of  Lewes  placed  i'^arl  Simon  at  the  head  of 
the  state.  "  Now  England  hreathes  in  the  hojKi  of  lil^ierty," 
sang  a  fx>et  of  the  time;  "the  P^iglinh  were  despised  like 
dogs,  but  now  they  have  lifte<l  up  their  head  and  their 
{(XiH  are  vanquished."  Ijut  the  mofleration  of  the  terms 
agreed  upon  in  the  Mise  of  Lfjwen,  a  convention  fx^tween 
the  King  and  his  captors,  shows  Simon's  sens^i  of  the  diffi- 
culties of  his  f/jsition.  ""J'he  question  of  the  Provisions 
wfis  again  to  Ixj  submitted  to  arbitration;  and  a  parlia- 
ment in  June,  to  which  four  knights  were  summoned  from 
every  cr^unty,  placed  the  administration  till  this  arbitra- 
tion was  complete  in  the  liands  of  a  new  council  of  nine 
to  be  nominated  Tjy  the  Karls  of  Leicester  and  Glouc^jstxT 
and  the-  patriotic  Bishop  of  Chichester.  R^^sfx^nsihility  to 
the  community  was  provided  for  by  the  declaration  of  a 
right  in  the  Vx^dy  of  barons  and  prelates  to  remove  either 
of  the  Three  Elect<jrs,  who  in  turn  could  displace  or  ap- 
\xAnt  the  members  of  the  Council.  Such  a  constitution 
was  of  a  different  order  from  the  cumbrous  and  oligarchi- 
cal committ^^es  of  12.08.  But  it  harl  little  time  to  work  in. 
The  plans  for  a  fresh  arbitration  broke  down.  Lewis  re- 
fused t()  review  his  decision,  and  all  schemes  for  setting 
fresh  judges  >>etween  the  King  and  his  itaoiAa  were  de< 
feated  by  a  formal  condemnation  of  the  barons'  cause  is- 
sued by  the  Pope.  Triumphant  as  he  was  indeed  Earl 
Simon's  difficulties  thickened  every  day.  The  Quf^;n  with 
Archbishop  Boniface  gathered  an  army  in  France  for  an 
invasion;  Roger  Mortimer  with  the  Ixjrder  barons  was 
still  in  arms  and  only  held  in  check  by  Llewelyn.  It  was 
impossible  t^>  make  binding  terms  with  an  imprisoned 
King,  yet  to  relea.se  Henry  without  terms  was  to  renew 
the  war.  The  imprisonment  t<';o  gave  a  shock  to  pu}>lic 
feeling  which  thinner]  tlie  Earl's  ranks.  In  the  new  Par- 
liament which  he  called  at  the  ox>ening  of  12fJo  the  weak- 


308  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


nes8  of  the  patriotic  party  among  the  baronage  was  shown 
in  the  fact  that  only  twenty-three  earls  and  barons  could  be 
found  to  sit  beside  the  hundred  and  twenty  ecclesiastics. 

But  it  was  just  this  sense  of  his  weakness  which 
prompted  the  Earl  to  an  act  that  has  done  more  than  any 
incident  of  this  struggle  to  immortalize  his  name.  Had 
the  strife  been  simply  a  strife  for  power  between  the  king 
and  the  baronage  the  victory  of  either  would  have  been 
equally  fatal  in  its  results.  The  success  of  the  one  would 
have  doomed  England  to  a  royal  despotism,  that  of  the 
other  to  a  feudal  aristocracy.  Fortunately  for  our  free- 
dom the  English  baronage  had  been  brought  too  low  by 
the  policy  of  the  kings  to  be  able  to  withstand  the  crown 
single-handed.  From  the  first  moment  of  the  contest  it 
had  been  forced  to  make  its  cause  a  national  one.  The 
summons  of  two  knights  from  each  county,  elected  in  its 
county  court,  to  a  Parliament  in  1254,  even  before  the 
opening  of  the  struggle,  was  a  recognition  of  the  political 
weight  of  the  country  gentry  which  was  confirmed  by  the 
summons  of  four  knights  from  every  county  to  the  Par- 
liament assembled  after  the  battle  of  Lewes.  The  Provi- 
sions of  Oxford,  in  stipulating  for  attendance  and  counsel 
on  the  part  of  twelve  delegates  of  the  "  commonalty, "  gave 
the  first  indication  of  a  yet  wider  appeal  to  the  people  at 
large.  But  it  was  the  weakness  of  his  party  among  the 
baronage  at  this  great  crisis  which  drove  Earl  Simon  to 
a  constitutional  change  of  mighty  issue  in  our  history. 
As  before,  he  summoned  two  knights  from  every  county. 
But  he  created  a  new  force  in  English  politics  when  he 
summoned  to  sit  beside  them  two  citizens  from  every 
borough.  The  attendance  of  delegates  from  the  towns 
had  long  been  usual  in  the  county  courts  when  any  matter 
respecting  their  interests  was  in  question ;  but  it  was  the 
writ  issued  by  Earl  Simon  that  first  summoned  the  mer- 
chant and  the  trader  to  sit  beside  the  knight  of  the  shire, 
the  baron,  and  the  bishop  in  the  parliament  of  the  realm. 

It  is  only  this  great  event  however  which  enables  us  to 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  309 


understand  the  large  and  prescient  nature  of  Earl  Simon's 
designs.  Hardly  a  few  months  had  passed  away  since 
the  victory  of  Lewes  when  the  burghers  took  their  seats  at 
Westminster,  yet  his  government  was  tottering  to  its  fall. 
We  know  little  of  the  Parliament's  acts.  It  seems  to 
have  chosen  Simon  as  Justiciar  and  to  have  provided  for 
Edward's  liberation,  though  he  was  still  to  live  under 
surveillance  at  Hereford  and  to  surrender  his  earldom  of 
Chester  to  Simon,  who  was  thus  able  to  communicate  with 
his  Welsh  allies.  The  Earl  met  the  dangers  from  with- 
out with  complete  success.  In  September,  1264,  a  general 
muster  of  the  national  forces  on  Barham  Down  and  a  con- 
trary wind  put  an  end  to  the  projects  of  invasion  enter- 
tained by  the  mercenaries  whom  the  Queen  had  collected 
in  Flanders ;  the  threats  of  France  died  away  into  nego- 
tiations ;  the  Papal  legate  was  forbidden  to  cross  the 
Channel,  and  his  bulls  of  excommunication  were  flung 
into  the  sea.  But  the  difficulties  at  home  grew  more  for- 
midable every  day.  The  restraint  upon  Henry  and  Ed- 
ward jarred  against  the  national  feeling  of  loyalty,  and 
estranged  the  mass  of  Englishmen  who  always  side  with 
the  weak.  Small  as  the  patriotic  party  among  the  barons 
had  been  from  the  first,  it  grew  smaller  as  dissensions 
broke  out  over  the  spoils  of  victory.  The  Earl's  justice 
and  resolve  to  secure  the  public  peace  told  heavily  against 
him.  John  Giffard  left  him  because  he  refused  to  allow 
him  to  exact  ransom  from  a  prisoner,  contrary  to  the 
agreement  made  after  Lewes.  A  greater  danger  opened 
when  the  young  Earl  of  Gloucester,  though  enriched  with 
the  estates  of  the  foreigners,  held  himself  aloof  from  the 
Justiciar,  and  resented  Leicester's  prohibition  of  a  tourna- 
ment, his  naming  the  wardens  of  the  royal  castles  by  his 
own  authority,  his  holding  Edward's  fortresses  on  the 
Welsh  marches  by  his  own  garrisons. 

Gloucester's  later  conduct  proves  the  wisdom  of  Leices- 
ter's precautions.  In  the  spring  Parliament  of  12G5  he 
openly  charged  the  Earl  with  violating  the  Mise  of  Lewes, 


310  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 


with  t3Tann5^,  and  with  aiming  at  the  crown.     Before  its 
close  he  withdrew  to  his  own  hinds  in  the  west  and  secretly 
allied  himself  with  Roger  Mortimer  and  the  Marcher  bar- 
ons.    Earl  Simon  soon  followed  him  to  the  west,  taking 
with  him  the  King  and  Edward.     He  moved  along  the 
Severn,  securing  its  towns,  advanced  westward  to  Here- 
ford, and  was  marching  at  the  end  of  June  along  bad 
roads  into  the  heart  of  South  Wales  to  attack  the  fortresses 
of  Earl  Gilbert  in  Glamorgan  when  Edward   suddenly- 
made  his  escape  from  Hereford  and  joined  Gloucester  at 
Ludlow.     The  moment  had  been  skilfully  chosen,  and  Ed- 
ward showed  a  rare  ability  in  the  movements  by  which 
he  took  advantage  of  the  Earl's  position.     Moving  rapidly 
along  the  Severn   he  seized  Gloucester  and  the  bridges 
across  the  river,  destroyed  the  ships  by  which  Leicester 
strove  to  escape  across  the  Channel  to  Bristol,  and  cut  him 
off  altogether  from  England.     By  this  movement  too  he 
placed  himself  between  the  Earl  and  his  son  Simon,  who 
was  advancing  from  the  east  to  his  father's  relief.     Turn- 
ing rapidly  on  this  second  force  Edward  surprised  it  at 
Kenilworth  and  drove  it  with  heavy  loss  within  the  walls 
of  the  castle.     But  the  success  was  more  than  compensated 
by  the  opportunity  which  his  absence  gave  to  the  Earl  of 
breaking  the  line  of  the  Severn.     Taken  by  surprise  and 
isolated  as  he  was,  Simon  had  been  forced  to  seek  for  aid 
and  troops  in  an  avowed  alliance  with  Llewelyn,  and  it 
was  with  Welsh  reinforcements  that  he  turned  to  the  east. 
But  the  seizure  of  his  ships  and  of  the  bridges  of  the 
Severn  held  him  a  prisoner  in  Edward's  grasp,  and  a 
fierce  attack  drove  him  back,  with  broken  and  starving 
forces,  into  the  Welsh  hills.     In  utter  despair  he  struck 
northward  to  Hereford ;  but  the  absence  of  Edward  now 
enabled  him  on  the  '^d  of  August  to  throw  his  troops  in 
boats  across  the  Severn  below  Worcester.     The  news  drew 
Edward  quickly  back  in  a  fruitless  counter-march  to  the 
river,  for  the  Earl  had  already  reached  Evesham  by  a  long 
night  march  on  the  morning  of  the  4th,  while  his  son,  re- 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1391.  311 

lieved  in  turn  by  Edward's  coimter-march,  had  pushed  in 
the  same  night  to  the  little  town  of  Alcester.  The  two 
armies  were  now  but  some  ten  miles  apart,  and  their  junc- 
tion seemed  secured.  But  both  were  spent  with  long 
marching,  and  while  the  Earl,  listening  reluctantly  to  the 
request  of  the  King  who  accompanied  him,  halted  at  Eve- 
sham for  mass  and  dinner,  the  army  of  the  younger  Simon 
halted  for  the  same  purpose  at  Alcester. 

"Those  two  dinners  doleful  were,  alas!"  sings  Robert 
of  Gloucester;  for  through  the  same  memorable  night  Ed- 
ward was  hurrying  back  from  the  Severn  by  country  cross- 
lanes  to  seize  the  fatal  gap  that  lay  between  them.  As 
morning  broke  his  army  lay  across  the  road  that  led 
northward  from  Evesham  to  Alcester.  Evesham  lies  in  a 
loop  of  the  river  Avon  where  it  bends  to  the  south ;  and  a 
height  on  which  Edward  ranged  his  troops  closed  the  one 
outlet  from  it  save  across  the  river.  But  a  force  had  been 
thrown  over  the  river  under  Mortimer  to  seize  the  bridges, 
and  all  retreat  was  thus  finally  cut  off.  The  approach  of 
Edward's  army  called  Simon  to  the  front,  and  for  the  mo- 
ment he  took  it  for  his  son's.  Though  the  hope  soon  died 
away  a  touch  of  soldierly  pride  moved  him  as  he  recog- 
nized in  the  orderly  advance  of  his  enemies  a  proof  of  his 
own  training.  "By  the  arm  of  St.  James,"  he  cried, 
"  they  come  on  in  wise  fashion,  but  it  was  from  me  that 
they  learned  it."  A  glance  however  satisfied  him  of  the 
hopelessness  of  a  struggle ;  it  was  impossible  for  a  hand- 
ful of  horsemen  with  a  mob  of  half -armed  Welshmen  to 
resist  the  disciplined  knighthood  of  the  royal  army.  "  Let 
us  commend  our  souls  to  God,"  Simon  said  to  the  little 
group  around  him,  "for  our  bodies  are  the  foe's."  He 
bade  Hugh  Despenser  and  the  rest  of  his  comrades  fly 
from  the  field.  "  If  he  died,"  was  the  noble  answer,  "  they 
had  no  will  to  live."  In  three  hours  the  butchery  was 
over.  The  Welsh  fled  at  the  first  onset  like  sheep,  and 
were  cut  ruthlessly  down  in  the  cornfields  and  gardens 
where  they  sought  refuge.     The  little  group  of  knights 


312  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  nt 


around  Simon  fought  desperately,  falling  one  by  one  till 
the  Earl  was  left  alone.  So  terrible  were  his  sword-strokes 
that  he  had  all  but  gained  the  hill-top  when  a  lance  thrust 
brought  his  horse  to  the  ground,  but  Simon  still  rejected 
the  summons  to  yield  till  a  blow  from  behind  felled  him 
mortally  wounded  to  the  ground.  Then  with  a  last  cry 
of  "  It  is  God's  grace  "  the  soul  of  the  great  patriot  passed 
away. 

The  triumphant  blare  of  trumpets  which  welcomed  the 
rescued  King  into  Evesham,  "his  men  weeping  for  joy," 
rang  out  in  bitter  contrast  to  the  mourning  of  the  realm. 
It  sounded  like  the  announcement  of  a  reign  of  terror. 
The  rights  and  laws  for  which  men  had  toiled  and  fought 
so  long  seemed  to  have  been  swept  away  in  an  hour. 
Every  town  which  had  supported  Earl  Simon  was  held  to 
be  at  the  King's  mercy,  its  franchises  to  be  forfeited. 
The  Charter  of  Lynn  was  annulled ;  London  was  marked 
out  as  the  special  object  of  Henry's  vengeance,  and  the 
farms  and  merchandise  of  its  citizens  were  seized  as  first- 
fruits  of  its  plunder.  The  darkness  which  on  that  fatal 
morning  hid  their  books  from  the  monks  of  Evesham  as 
they  sang  in  choir  was  but  a  presage  of  the  gloom  which 
fell  on  the  religious  houses.  From  Ramsey,  from  Eve- 
sham, from  St.  Alban's  rose  the  same  cry  of  havoc  and 
rapine.  But  the  plunder  of  monk  and  burgess  was  little 
to  the  vast  sentence  of  confiscation  which  the  mere  fact  of 
rebellion  was  held  to  have  passed  on  all  the  adherents  of 
Earl  Simon.  To  " disinherit"  these  of  their  lands  was  to 
confiscate  half  the  estates  of  the  landed  gentry  of  England ; 
but  the  hotter  royalists  declared  them  disinherited,  and 
Henry  was  quick  to '  lavish  their  lauds  away  on  favorites 
and  foreigners.  The  very  chroniclers  of  their  party  recall 
the  pillage  with  shame.  But  all  thought  of  resistance  lay 
hushed  in  a  general  terror.  Even  the  younger  Simon 
"saw  no  other  rede"  than  to  release  his  prisoners.  His 
army,  after  finishing  its  meal,  was  again  on  its  march  to 
join  the  Earl  when  the  ne\^s  of  his  defeat  met  it,  heralded 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  313 


by  a  strange  darkness  that,  rising  suddenly  in  the  north- 
west and  following  as  it  were  on  Edward's  track  served  to 
shroud  the  mutilations  and  horrors  of  the  battle-field.  The 
news  was  soon  fatally  confirmed.  Simon  himself  could  see 
from  ^ar  his  father's  head  borne  off  on  a  spear-point  to 
be  mocked  at  Wigmore.  But  the  pursuit  streamed  away 
southward  and  westward  through  the  streets  of  Tewkes- 
bury, heaped  with  corpses  of  the  panic-struck  Welshmen 
whom  the  townsmen  slaughtered  without  pity ;  and  there 
was  no  attack  as  the  little  force  fell  back  through  the  dark- 
ness and  big  thunder-drops  in  despair  upon  Kenil worth. 
"I  may  hang  up  my  axe,"  are  the  bitter  words  which  a 
poet  attributes  to  their  leader,  "  for  feebly  have  I  gone ;" 
and  once  within  the  castle  he  gave  way  to  a  wild  sorrow, 
day  after  day  tasting  neither  meat  nor  drink. 

He  was  roused  into  action  again  by  news  of  the  shame- 
ful indignities  which  the  Marcher  lords  had  offered  to  the 
body  of  the  great  Earl  before  whom  they  had  trembled  so 
long.  The  knights  around  him  broke  out  at  the  tidings 
in  a  passionate  burst  of  fury,  and  clamored  for  the  blood 
of  Richard  of  Cornwall  and  his  son,  who  were  prisoners  in 
the  castle.  But  Simon  had  enough  nobleness  left  to  inter- 
pose. "To  God  and  him  alone  was  it  owing,"  Richard 
owned  afterward,  "  that  I  was  snatched  from  death."  The 
captives  were  not  only  saved,  but  set  free.  A  Parliament 
had  been  called  at  Winchester  at  the  opening  of  Septem- 
ber, and  its  mere  assembly  promised  an  end  to  the  reign 
of  utter  lawlessness.  A  powerful  party,  too,  was  known 
to  exist  in  the  royal  camp,  which,  hostile  as  it  had  shown 
itself  to  Earl  Simon,  shared  his  love  for  English  liberties, 
and  the  liberation  of  Richard  was  sure  to  aid  its  efforts. 
At  the  head  of  this  party  stood  the  young  Earl  of  Gloucester, 
Gilbert  of  Clare,  to  whose  action  above  all  the  Earl's 
overthrow  was  due.  And  with  Gilbert  stood  Edward 
himself.  The  passion  for  law,  the  instinct  of  good  gov- 
ernment, which  were  to  make  his  reign  so  memorable  in 
our  history,  had  declared  themselves  from  the  first.     He 


314  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


had  sided  with  the  barons  at  the  outset  of  their  struggle 
with  Henrj' ;  he  had  striven  to  keep  his  father  true  to  the 
Provisions  of  Oxford.  It  was  only  when  the  figure  of 
Earl  Simon  seemed  to  tower  above  that  of  Henry  himself, 
vhen  the  Crown  seemed  falling  into  bondage,  that  Edward 
•assed  to  the  royal  side ;  and  now  that  the  danger  which 
jie  dreaded  was  over  he  returned  to  his  older  attitude.  In 
the  first  flush  of  victory,  while  the  doom  of  Simon  was  as 
yet  unknown,  Edward  had  stood  alone  in  desiring  his  cap- 
tivity against  the  cry  of  the  Marcher-lords  for  his  blood. 
When  all  was  done  he  wept  over  the  corpse  of  his  cousin 
and  playfellow,  Henry  de  Montfort,  and  followed  the  Earl's 
body  to  the  tomb.  But  great  as  was  Edward's  position 
after  the  victory  of  Evesham,  his  moderate  counsels  were 
as  yet  of  little  avail.  His  efforts  in  fact  were  met  by  those 
of  Henry's  second  son,  Edmund,  who  had  received  the 
lands  and  earldom  of  Earl  Simon,  and  whom  the  dread  of 
any  restoration  of  the  house  of  De  Montfort  set  at  the  head 
of  the  ultra-royalists.  Nor  was  any  hope  of  moderation 
to  be  found  in  the  Parliament  which  met  in  September, 
1265.  It  met  in  the  usual  temper  of  a  restoration-Parlia- 
ment to  legalize  the  outrages  of  the  previous  month.  The 
prisoners  who  had  been  released  from  the  dungeons  of  the 
barons  poured  into  Winchester  to  add  fresh  violence  to 
the  demands  of  the  Marchers.  The  wives  of  the  captive 
loyalists  and  the  widows  of  the  slain  were  summoned  to 
give  fresh  impulse  to  the  reaction.  Their  place  of  meet- 
ing added  fuel  to  the  fiery  passions  of  the  throng,  for  Win- 
chester was  fresh  from  its  pillage  by  the  younger  Simon 
on  his  way  to  Kenilworth,  and  its  stubborn  loyalty  must 
have  been  fanned  into  a  flame  by  the  losses  it  had  endured. 
In  such  an  assembly  no  voice  of  moderation  could  find  a 
hearing.  The  four  bishops  who  favored  the  national  cause, 
the  bishops  of  London  and  Lincoln,  of  Worcester  and  Chi- 
chester, were  excluded  from  it,  and  the  heads  of  the  relig- 
ious houses  were  summoned  for  the  mere  purpose  of  ex- 
tortion.    Its  measures  were  but  a  confirmation  of  the 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  315 


violence  which  had  been  wrought.  All  grants  made  dur- 
ing the  King's  "  captivity"  were  revoked.  The  house  of 
De  Montfort  was  banished  from  the  realm.  The  charter 
of  London  was  annulled.  The  adherents  of  Earl  Simon 
were  disinherited  and  seizin  of  their  lands  was  given  to 
the  King. 

Henry  at  once  appointed  commissioners  to  survey  and 
take  possession  of  his  spoil  while  he  moved  to  Windsor  to 
triumph  in  the  humiliation  of  London,  Its  mayor  and 
forty  of  its  chief  citizens  waited  in  the  castle  yard  only  to 
be  thrown  into  prison  in  spite  of  a  safe-conduct,  and  Henry 
entered  his  capital  in  triumph  as  into  an  enemy's  city. 
The  surrender  of  Dover  cu,me  to  fill  his  cup  of  joy,  for  Rich- 
ard and  Amaury  of  Montfort  had  sailed  with  the  Earl's 
treasure  to  enlist  foreign  mercenaries,  and  it  was  by  this 
port  that  their  force  was  destined  to  land.  But  a  rising 
of  the  prisoners  detained  there  compelled  its  surrender  in 
October,  and  the  success  of  the  royalists  seemed  complete. 
In  reality  their  difficulties  were  but  beginning.  Their  tri- 
umph over  Earl  Simon  had  been  a  triumph  over  the  relig- 
ious sentiment  of  the  time,  and  religion  avenged  itself 
in  its  own  way.  Everywhere  the  Earl's  death  was  looked 
upon  as  a  martyrdom ;  and  monk  and  friar  united  in  pray- 
ing for  the  souls  of  the  men  who  fell  at  Evesham  as  for 
soldiers  of  Christ.  It  was  soon  whispered  that  Heaven 
was  attesting  the  sanctity  of  De  Montfort  by  miracles  at 
his  tomb.  How  great  was  the  effect  of  this  belief  was  seen 
in  the  efforts  of  King  and  Pope  to  suppress  the  miracles^ 
and  in  their  continuance  not  only  through  the  reign  of 
Edward  the  First  but  even  in  the  days  of  his  successor. 
But  its  immediate  result  was  a  sudden  revival  of  hope. 
"Sighs  are  changed  into  songs  of  praise,"  breaks  out  a 
monk  of  the  time,  ''  and  the  greatness  of  our  former  joy 
has  come  to  life  again !"  Nor  was  it  in  miracles  alone 
that  the  "faithful,"  as  they  proudly  styled  themselves,  be- 
gan to  look  for  relief  "  from  the  oppression  of  the  malig- 
nants."     A  monk  of  St.  Alban's  who  was  penning  a  eulogy 


316  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


of  Earl  Simon  in  the  midst  of  this  uproar  saw  the  rise  of 
a  new  spirit  of  resistance  in  the  streets  of  the  little  town. 
In  dread  of  war  it  was  guarded  and  strongly  closed  with 
bolts  and  bars,  and  refused  entrance  to  all  strangers,  and 
above  all  to  horsemen,  who  wished  to  pass  through.  The 
Constable  of  Hertford,  an  old  foe  of  the  townsmen,  boasted 
that  spite  of  bolts  and  bars  he  would  enter  the  place  and 
carry  off  four  of  the  best  villeins  captive.  He  contrived 
to  make  his  way  in ;  but  as  he  loitered  idly  about  a  butcher 
who  passed  by  heard  him  ask  his  men  how  the  wind  stood. 
The  butcher  guessed  his  design  to  burn  the  town,  and 
felled  him  to  the  ground.  The  blow  roused  the  townsmen. 
They  secured  the  Constable  and  his  followers,  struck  off 
their  heads,  and  fixed  them  at  the  four  corners  of  the 
borough. 

The  popular  reaction  gave  fresh  heart  to  the  younger 
Simon.  Quitting  Kenilworth,  he  joined  in  November  John 
D'Eyvill  and  Baldewin  Wake  in  the  Isle  of  Axholme  where 
the  Disinherited  were  gathering  in  arms.  So  fast  did 
horse  and  foot  flow  in  to  him  that  Edward  himself  hur- 
ried into  Lincolnshire  to  meet  this  new  danger.  He  saw 
that  the  old  strife  was  just  breaking  out  again.  The  gar- 
rison of  Kenilworth  scoured  the  country ;  the  men  of  the 
Cinque  Ports,  putting  wives  and  children  on  board  their 
barks,  swept  the  Channel  and  harried  the  coasts;  while 
Llewelyn,  who  had  brought  about  the  dissolution  of  Par- 
liament by  a  raid  upon  Chester,  butchered  the  forces  sent 
against  him  and  was  master  of  the  border.  The  one  thing 
needed  to  link  the  forces  of  resistance  together  was  a  head, 
and  such  a  head  the  appearance  of  Simon  at  Axholme 
seemed  to  promise.  But  Edward  was  resolute  in  his  plan 
of  conciliation.  Arriving  before  the  camp  at  the  close  of 
1265,  he  at  once  entered  into  negotiations  with  his  cousin, 
and  prevailed  on  him  to  quit  the  island  and  appear  before 
the  King.  Richard  of  Cornwall  welcomed  Simon  at  the 
court,  he  presented  him  to  Henry  as  the  savior  of  hie  life, 
and  on  his  promise  to  surrender  Kenilworth  Henry  gave 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1291.  317 


him  the  kiss  of  peace.  In  spite  of  the  opposition  of  Roger 
Mortimer  and  the  Marcher-lords  success  seemed  to  be 
crowning  this  bold  stroke  of  the  peace  party  when  the  Earl 
of  Gloucester  interposed.  Desirous  as  he  was  of  peace, 
the  blood  of  De  Montfort  lay  between  him  and  the  Earl's 
sons,  and  the  safety  of  the  one  lay  in  the  ruin  of  the  other. 
In  the  face  of  this  danger  Earl  Gilbert  threw  his  weight 
into  the  scale  of  the  ultra-royalists,  and  peace  became  im- 
possible. The  question  of  restitution  was  shelved  by  a 
reference  to  arbitrators ;  and  Simon,  detained  in  spite  of  a 
safe-conduct,  moved  in  Henry's  train  at  Christmas  to  wit- 
ness the  surrender  of  Kenilworth  which  had  been  stipu- 
lated as  the  price  of  his  full  reconciliation  with  the  King. 
But  hot  blood  was  now  stirred  again  on  both  sides.  The 
garrison  replied  to  the  royal  summons  by  a  refusal  to  sur- 
render. They  had  received  ward  of  the  castle,  they  said, 
not  from  Simon  but  from  the  Countess,  and  to  none  but 
her  would  they  give  it  up.  The  refusal  was  not  likely  to 
make  Simon's  position  an  easier  one.  On  his  return  to 
London  the  award  of  the  arbitrators  bound  him  to  quit  the 
realm  and  not  to  return  save  with  the  assent  of  King  and 
baronage  when  all  were  at  peace.  He  remained  for  awhile 
in  free  custody  at  London;  but  warnings  that  he  was 
doomed  to  life-long  imprisonment  drove  him  to  flight,  and 
he  finally  sought  a  refuge  over  sea. 

His  escape  set  England  again  on  fire.  Llewelyn  wasted 
the  border;  the  Cinque  Ports  held  the  sea;  the  garrison 
of  Kenilworth  pushed  their  raids  as  far  as  Oxford ;  Balde- 
win  Wake  with  a  band  of  the  Disinherited  threw  himself 
into  the  woods  and  harried  the  eastern  counties;  Sir  Adam 
Gurdon,  a  knight  of  gigantic  size  and  renowned  prowess, 
wasted  with  a  smaller  party  the  shires  of  the  south.  In 
almost  every  county  bands  of  outlaws  were  seeking  a  live- 
lihood in  rapine  and  devastation,  while  the  royal  treasury 
stood  empty  and  the  enormous  fine  imposed  upon  London 
had  been  swept  into  the  coffers  of  French  usurers.  But  a 
stronger  hand  than  the  King's  was  now  at  the  head  of 


318  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IH 


affairs,  and  Edward  met  his  assailants  with  untiring  en- 
ergy. King  Richard's  son,  Henry  of  Ahnaine,  was  sent 
with  a  large  force  to  the  north ;  Mortimer  hurried  to  hold 
the  Welsh  border;  Edmund  was  despatched  to  Warwick 
to  hold  Kenilworth  in  check;  while  Edward  himself 
marched  at  the  opening  of  March  to  the  south.  The 
Berkshire  woods  were  soon  cleared,  and  at  Whitsuntide 
Edward  succeeded  in  dispersing  Adam  Gurdon's  band  and 
in  capturing  its  renowned  leader  in  single  combat.  The 
last  blow  was  already  given  to  the  rising  in  the  north, 
where  Henry  of  Almaine  surprised  the  Disinherited  at 
Chesterfield  and  took  their  leader,  the  Earl  of  Derby,  in 
his  bed.  Though  Edmund  had  done  little  but  hold  the 
Kenilworth  knights  in  check,  the  submission  of  the  rest 
of  the  country  now  enabled  the  royal  army  to  besiege  it 
in  force.  But  the  King  was  penniless,  and  the  Parliament 
which  he  called  to  replenish  his  treasury  in  August  showed 
the  resolve  of  the  nation  that  the  strife  should  cease.  They 
would  first  establish  peace,  if  peace  were  possible,  they 
said,  and  then  answer  the  King's  demand.  Twelve  com- 
missioners, with  Earl  Gilbert  at  their  head ,  were  appointed 
on  Henry's  assent  to  arrange  terms  of  reconciliation.  They 
at  once  decided  that  none  should  be  utterly  disinherited 
for  their  part  in  the  troubles,  but  that  liberty  of  redemp- 
tion should  be  left  open  to  all.  Furious  at  the  prospect  of 
being  forced  to  disgorge  their  spoil,  Mortimer  and  the 
ultra-royalists  broke  out  in  mad  threats  of  violence,  even 
against  the  life  of  the  Papal  legate  who  had  pressed  for 
the  reconciliation.  But  the  power  of  the  ultra-royalists 
was  over.  The  general  resolve  was  not  to  be  shaken  by 
the  clamor  of  a  faction,  and  Mortimer's  rout  at  Brecknock 
by  Llewelyn,  the  one  defeat  that  checkered  the  tide  of  suc- 
cess, had  damaged  that  leader's  influence.  Backed  by 
Edward  and  Earl  Gilbert,  the  legate  met  their  opposition 
with  a  threat  of  excommunication,  and  Mortimer  with- 
drew sullenly  from  the  camp.  Fresh  trouble  in  the  coun- 
try and  the  seizure  of  the  Islf»  of  Ely  by  a  band  of  the  Dis- 


Chap.  3.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  319 


inherited  quickened  the  labors  of  the  Twelve.  At  the 
close  of  September  they  pronounced  their  award,  restoring 
their  lands  to  all  who  made  submission  on  a  graduated 
scale  of  redemption,  promising  indemnity  for  all  wrongs 
done  during  the  troubles,  and  leaving  the  restoration  of 
the  house  of  De  Montfort  to  the  royal  will.  But  to  these 
provisions  were  added  an  emphatic  demand  that "  the  King 
fully  keep  and  observe  those  liberties  of  the  Church,  char- 
ters of  liberties,  and  forest  charters,  which  he  is  expressly 
and  by  his  own  mouth  bound  to  preserve  and  keep. "  "  Let 
the  King,"  they  add,  "establish  on  a  lasting  foundation 
those  concessions  which  he  has  hitherto  made  of  his  own 
will  and  not  on  compulsion,  and  those  needful  ordinances 
which  have  been  devised  by  his  subjects  and  by  his  own 
good  pleasure." 

With  this  Award  the  struggle  came  to  an  end.  The  gar- 
rison of  Kenilworth  held  out  indeed  till  November,  and  the 
full  benefit  of  the  Ban  was  only  secured  when  Earl  Gilbert 
in  the  opening  of  the  following  year  suddenly  appeared  in 
arms  and  occupied  London.  But  the  Earl  was  satisfied, 
the  Disinherited  were  at  last  driven  from  Ely,  and  Llew- 
elyn was  brought  to  submission  by  the  appearance  of  an 
army  at  Shrewsbury.  All  was  over  by  the  close  of  1267. 
His  father's  age  and  weakness,  his  own  brilliant  military 
successes,  left  Edward  practically  in  possession  of  the  royal 
power ;  and  his  influence  at  once  made  itself  felt.  There 
was  no  attempt  to  return  to  the  misrule  of  Henry's  reign, 
to  his  projects  of  continental  aggrandizement  or  internal 
despotism.  The  constitutional  system  of  government  for 
which  the  Barons  had  fought  was  finally  adopted  by  the 
Crown,  and  the  Parliament  of  Marlborough  which  as- 
sembled in  November,  12G7,  renewed  the  provisions  by 
which  the  baronage  had  remedied  the  chief  abuses  of  the 
time  in  their  Provisions  of  Oxford  and  Westminster. 
The  appointment  of  all  officers  of  state  indeed  was  jealously 
reserved  to  the  crown.  But  the  royal  expenditure  was 
brought  within  bounds.     Taxation  was  only  imposed  with 


320  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  HI. 

the  assent  of  the  Great  Council,  So  utterly  was  the  land 
at  rest  that  Edward  felt  himself  free  to  take  the  cross  in 
12G8  and  to  join  the  Crusade  which  was  being  undertaken 
by  St.  Lewis  of  France,  He  reached  Tunis  only  to  find 
Lewis  dead  and  his  enterprise  a  failure,  wintered  in  Sicily, 
made  his  way  to  Acre  in  the  spring  of  1271,  and  spent 
more  than  a  year  in  exploits  which  want  of  force  prevented 
from  growing  into  a  serious  campaign.  He  was  already 
on  his  way  home  when  the  death  of  Henry  the  Third  in 
November,  1272,  called  him  to  the  throne. 


CHAPTER  ly. 

EDWAKD   THE   FIKST. 
1272—1307. 

In  his  own  day  and  among  his  own  subjects  Edward 
the  First  was  the  object  of  an  almost  boundless  admiration. 
He  was  in  the  truest  sense  a  national  King.  At  the  mo- 
ment when  the  last  trace  of  foreign  conquest  passed  away, 
when  the  descendants  of  those  who  won  and  those  who 
lost  at  Senlac  blended  forever  into  an  English  people,  Eng- 
land saw  in  her  ruler  no  stranger,  but  an  Englishman. 
The  national  tradition  returned  in  more  than  the  golden 
hair  or  the  English  name  which  linked  him  to  our  earlier 
Kings.  Edward's  very  temper  was  English  to  the  core. 
In  good  as  in  evil  he  stands  out  as  the  typical  representa- 
tive of  the  race  he  ruled,  like  them  wilful  and  imperious, 
tenacious  of  his  rights,  indomitable  in  his  pride,  dogged, 
stubborn,  slow  of  apprehension,  narrow  of  sympathy,  but 
like  them,  too,  just  in  the  main,  unselfish,  laborious,  con- 
scientious, haughtily  observant  of  truth  and  self-respect, 
temperate,  reverent  of  duty,  religious.  It  is  this  oneness 
with  the  character  of  his  people  which  parts  the  temper  of 
Edward  from  w^hat  had  till  now  been  the  temper  of  his 
house.  He  inherited  indeed  from  the  Angevins  their  fierce 
and  passionate  wrath  ;  his  punishments,  when  he  punished 
in  anger,  w^ere  without  pity  ;  and  a  priest  who  ventured 
at  a  moment  of  storm  into  his  presence  with  a  remon- 
strance dropped  dead  from  sheer  fright  at  his  feet.  But 
his  nature  had  nothing  of  the  hard  selfishness,  the  vindic- 
tive obstinacy  which  had  so  long  characterized  the  house 

of  Anjou.     His  wrath  passed  as  quickly  as  it  gathered; 
Vol.  L— 21 


3-yi  niSTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  HI. 

and  for  the  most  part  liisconduct  was  thatof  an  impulsive, 
generous  man,  trustful,  averse  from  cruelty,  prone  to  for- 
give. "No  man  ever  asked  mercy  of  me,"  he  said  in  his 
old  age,  "  and  was  refused. "  The  rough  soldierly  noble- 
ness of  his  natui'e  broke  out  in  incidents  like  that  at  Fal- 
kirk where  ho  lay  on  the  bare  ground  among  his  men,  or 
in  his  refusal  during  a  Welsh  campaign  to  drink  of  the 
one  cask  of  wine  which  had  been  saved  from  marauders. 
"It  is  I  who  have  brought  j'ou  into  this  strait,"  he  said 
to  hif!  thirsty  fellow-soldiers,  "  and  I  will  have  no  advan- 
tage of  you  in  meat  or  drink."  Beneath  the  stern  imperi- 
ousness  of  his  outer  bearing  lay  in  fact  a  strange  tenderness 
and  sensitiveness  to  alTection.  Every  subject  throughout 
his  realm  was  drawn  closer  to  the  King  who  wept  bitterly 
at  the  news  of  his  father's  death  though  it  gave  him  a 
crown,  whose  fiercest  burst  of  vengeance  was  called  out 
by  an  insult  to  his  mother,  whose  crosses  rose  as  memorials 
of  his  love  and  sorrow  at  every  spot  where  his  wife's  bier 
rested.  "  I  loved  her  tenderly  in  her  lifetime,"  wrote  Ed- 
ward to  Eleanor's  friend,  the  Abbot  of  Clugny ;  "  I  do  not 
cease  to  love  her  now  she  is  dead."  And  as  it  was  with 
mother  and  wife,  so  it  was  with  his  people  at  large.  All 
the  self -concentrated  isolation  of  the  foreign  Kings  disap- 
peared in  Edward.  He  was  the  first  English  ruler  since 
the  Conquest  who  loved  his  people  with  a  personal  love 
and  craved  for  their  love  back  again.  To  his  trust  in  them 
we  owe  our  Parliament,  to  his  care  for  them  the  great 
statutes  which  stand  in  the  forefront  of  our  laws.  Even 
in  his  struggles  with  her  England  understood  a  temper 
which  was  so  perfectly  her  own,  and  the  quarrels  between 
King  and  people  during  his  reign  are  quarrels  where,  dog- 
gedly as  they  fought,  neither  disputant  doubted  for  a  mo- 
ment the  worth  or  affection  of  the  other.  Few  scenes  in 
our  history  are  more  touching  than  a  scene  during  the  long 
contest  over  the  Charter,  when  Edward  stood  face  to  face 
with  his  people  in  Westminster  Hall  and  with  a  sudden 
burst  of  tears  owned  himself  frankly  in  the  wrong. 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  323 


But  it  was  just  this  sensitiveness,  this  openness  to  outer 
impressions  and  outer  influences,  that  led  to  the  strange 
contradictions  which  meet  us  in  Edward's  career.  His 
reign  was  a  time  in  which  a  for(3ign  influence  told  strongly 
on  our  manners,  our  literature,  our  national  spirit,  for  the 
sudden  rise  of  France  into  a  compact  and  organized  mon- 
archy was  now  making  its  influence  dominant  in  Western 
Europe.  The  "  chivalry"  so  familiar  to  us  in  the  pages  of 
Froissart,  that  picturesque  mimicry  of  high  sentiment,  of 
heroism,  love,  and  courtesy  before  which  all  depth  and 
reality  of  nobleness  disappeared  to  make  room  for  the  coars- 
est profligacy,  the  narrowest  caste-spirit,  and  a  brutal  in- 
difference to  human  suffering,  was  specially  of  French 
creation.  There  was  a  nobleness  in  Edward's  nature  from 
which  the  baser  influences  of  this  chivalry  fell  away.  His 
life  was  pure,  his  piety,  save  when  it  stooped  to  the  super- 
stition of  the  time,  manly  and  sincere,  while  his  high  sense 
of  duty  saved  him  from  the  frivolous  self-indulgence  of 
his  successors.  But  he  was  far  from  being  wholl}^  free 
from  the  taint  of  his  age.  His  passionate  desire  was  to 
be  a  model  of  the  fashionable  chivalry  of  his  day.  His 
frame  was  that  of  a  born  soldier — tall,  deep-chested,  long 
of  limb,  capable  alike  of  endurance  or  action,  and  he  shared 
to  the  full  his  people's  love  of  venture  and  hard  fighting. 
When  he  encountered  Adam  Gurdon  after  Evesham  he 
forced  him  single-handed  to  beg  for  mercy.  At  the  open- 
ing of  his  reign  he  saved  his  life  by  sheer  fighting  in  a 
tournament  at  Challon.  It  was  this  love  of  adventure 
which  lent  itself  to  the  frivoloufs  unreality  of  the  new  chiv- 
alry. His  fame  as  a  general  sfiemed  a  small  thing  to  Ed- 
ward when  compared  with  his  fame  as  a  knight.  At  his 
"  Round  Table  of  Kenilworth"  n  hundred  lords  and  ladies, 
"clad  all  in  silk,"  renewed  the  faded  glories  of  Arthur's 
Court.  The  false  air  of  romance  which  was  soon  to  turn 
the  gravest  political  resolutions  into  outbursts  of  senti- 
mental feeling  appeared  in  his  "Vow  of  the  Swan,"  when 
rising  at  the  royal  board  he  swore  on  the  dish  before  him 


324  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IH. 

to  avenge  on  Scotland  the  murder  of  Comyn,  Chivalry 
exerted  on  him  a  yet  more  fatal  influence  in  its  narrowing 
of  his  sympathy  to  the  noble  class  and  in  its  exclusion  of 
the  peasant  and  the  craftsman  from  all  claim  to  pity. 
"  Knight  without  reproach"  as  he  was,  he  looked  calmly 
on  at  the  massacre  of  the  burghers  of  Berwick,  and  saw 
in  William  Wallace  nothing  but  a  common  robber. 

The  French  notion  of  chivalry  had  hardly  more  power 
over  Edward's  mind  than  the  French  conception  of  king- 
ship, feudality,  and  law.  The  rise  of  a  lawyer  class  was 
everywhere  hardening  customary  into  written  rights,  alle- 
giance into  subjection,  loose  ties  such  as  commendation 
into  a  definite  vassalage.  But  it  was  specially  through 
French  influence,  the  influence  of  St.  Lewis  and  his  suc- 
cessors, that  the  imperial  theories  of  the  Roman  Law  were 
brought  to  bear  upon  this  natural  tendency  of  the  time. 
When  the  "  sacred  majesty"  of  the  Csesars  was  transferred 
by  a  legal  fiction  to  the  royal  head  of  a  feudal  baronage 
every  constitutional  relation  was  changed.  The  "  defiance" 
by  which  a  vassal  renounced  service  to  his  lord  became 
treason,  his  after  resistance  "sacrilege."  That  Edward 
could  appreciate  what  was  sound  and  noble  in  the  legal 
spirit  around  him  was  shown  in  his  reforms  of  our  judica- 
ture and  our  Parliament ;  but  there  was  something  as  con- 
genial to  his  mind  in  its  definiteness,  its  rigidity,  its  nar- 
row technicalities.  He  was  never  wilfully  unjust,  but 
he  was  too  often  captious  in  his  justice,  fond  of  legal  chi- 
canery, prompt  to  take  advantage  of  the  letter  of  the  law. 
The  high  conception  of  royalty  which  he  borrowed  from 
St.  Lewis  united  with  this  legal  turn  of  mind  in  the  worst 
acts  of  his  reign.  Of  rights  or  liberties  unregistered  in 
charter  or  roll  Edward  would  know  nothing,  while  his  own 
good  sense  was  overpowered  by  the  majestj^  of  his  crown. 
It  was  incredible  to  him  that  Scotland  should  revolt  against 
a  legal  bargain  which  made  her  national  independence 
conditional  on  the  terms  extorted  from  a  claimant  of  her 
throne;  nor  could  he  view  in  any  other  light  but  as  treason 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  325 

the  resistance  of  his  own  baronage  to  an  arbitrary  taxa- 
tion which  their  fathers  had  borne. 

It  is  in  the  anomahes  of  such  a  character  as  this,  in  its 
strange  mingling  of  justice  and  wrong-doing,  of  grandeur 
and  littleness,  that  we  must  look  for  any  fair  explanation 
of  much  that  has  since  been  bitterly  blamed  in  Edward's 
conduct  and  policy.  But  what  none  of  these  anomalies 
can  hide  from  us  is  the  height  of  moral  temper  which  shows 
itself  in  the  tenor  of  his  rule.  Edward  was  every  inch  a 
king ;  but  his  notion  of  kingship  was  a  lofty  and  a  noble 
one.  He  loved  power ;  he  believed  in  his  sovereign  rights 
and  clung  to  them  with  a  stubborn  tenacitj'.  But  his  main 
end  in  clinging  to  them  was  the  welfare  of  his  people. 
Nothing  better  proves  the  self-command  which  he  drew 
from  the  purpose  he  set  before  him  than  his  freedom  from 
the  common  sin  of  great  rulers — the  lust  of  military  glory. 
He  was  the  first  of  our  kings  since  William  the  Conqueror 
who  combined  military  genius  with  political  capacity ;  but 
of  the  warrior's  temper,  of  the  temper  that  finds  delight  in 
war,  he  had  little  or  none.  His  freedom  from  it  was  the 
more  remarkable  that  Edward  was  a  great  soldier.  His 
strategy  in  the  campaign  before  Evesham  marked  him  as 
a  consummate  general.  Earl  Simon  was  forced  to  admire 
the  skill  of  his  advance  on  the  fatal  field,  and  the  opera- 
tions by  which  he  met  the  risings  that  followed  it  were  a 
model  of  rapidity  and  military  grasp.  In  his  Welsh  cam- 
paigns he  was  soon  to  show  a  tenacity  and  force  of  will 
which  wrested  victory  out  of  the  midst  of  defeat.  He 
could  head  a  furious  charge  of  horse  as  at  Lewes,  or  or- 
ganize a  commissariat  which  enabled  him  to  move  army 
after  army  across  the  harried  Lowlands.  In  his  old  age 
he  was  quick  to  discover  the  value  of  the  English  archery 
and  to  employ  it  as  a  means  of  victory  at  Falkirk.  But 
master  as  he  was  of  the  art  of  war,  and  forced  from  time 
to  time  to  show  his  mastery  in  great  campaigns,  in  no 
single  instance  was  he  the  assailant.  He  fought  only 
when  he  was  forced  to  fight ;  and  when  fighting  was  over 


326  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

he  turned  back  quietly  to  the  work  of  administration  and 
the  making  of  laws. 

War  in  fact  was  with  Edward  simply  a  means  of  carry- 
ing out  the  ends  of  statesmanship,  and  it  was  in  the  char- 
acter of  his  statesmanship  that  his  real  greatness  made 
itself  felt.  His  policy  was  an  English  policy ;  he  was  firm 
to  retain  what  was  left  of  the  French  dominion  of  his  race, 
but  he  abandoned  from  the  first  all  dreams  of  recovering 
the  wider  dominions  which  his  grandfather  had  lost.  His 
mind  was  not  on  that  side  of  the  Channel,  but  on  this. 
He  concentrated  his  energies  on  the  consolidation  and 
good  government  of  England  itself.  We  can  only  fairly 
judge  the  annexation  of  Wales  or  his  attempt  to  annex 
Scotland  if  we  look  on  his  efforts  in  either  quarter  as  parts 
of  the  same  scheme  of  national  administration  to  which 
we  owe  his  final  establishment  of  our  judicature,  our  leg- 
islation, our  parliament.  The  character  of  his  action  was 
no  doubt  determined  in  great  part  by  the  general  mood  of 
his  age,  an  age  whose  special  task  and  aim  seemed  to  be 
that  of  reducing  to  distinct  form  the  principles  which  had 
sprung  into  a  new  and  vigorous  life  during  the  age  which 
preceded  it.  As  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century  had 
been  an  age  of  founders,  creators,  discoverers,  so  its  close 
was  an  age  of  lawyers,  of  rulers  such  as  St.  Lewis  of  France 
or  Alfonzo  the  Wise  of  Castille,  organizers,  administrators, 
framers  of  laws  and  institutions.  It  was  to  this  class  that 
Edward  himself  belonged.  He  had  little  of  creative  genius, 
of  political  originality,  but  he  possessed  in  a  high  degree 
the  passion  for  order  and  good  government,  the  faculty  of 
organization,  and  a  love  of  law  which  broke  out  even  in 
the  legal  chicanery  to  which  he  sometimes  stooped.  In 
the  judicial  reforms  to  which  so  much  of  his  attention  was 
directed  he  showed  himself,  if  not  an  "  English  Justinian," 
at  any  rate  a  clear-sighted  and  judicious  man  of  business, 
developing,  reforming,  bringing  into  a  shape  which  has 
borne  the  test  of  five  centuries'  experience  the  institutions 
of  his  predecessors.     If  the  excellence  of  a  statesman's  work 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  827 


is  to  be  measured  by  its  duration  and  the  faculty  it  has 
shown  of  adapting  itself  to  the  growth  and  development 
of  a  nation,  then  the  work  of  Edward  rises  to  the  highest 
standard  of  excellence.  Our  law  courts  preserve  to  this 
very  day  the  form  which  he  gave  them.  Mighty  as  has 
been  the  growth  of  our  Parliament,  it  has  grown  on  the 
lines  which  he  laid  down.  The  great  roll  of  English  Stat- 
utes reaches  back  in  unbroken  series  to  the  Statutes  of  Ed- 
ward. The  routine  of  the  first  Henry,  the  administrative 
changes  which  had  been  imposed  on  the  nation  by  the  clear 
head  and  imperious  will  of  the  second,  were  transformed 
under  Edward  into  a  political  organization  with  carefully 
defined  limits,  directed  not  by  the  King's  will  alone  but 
by  the  political  impulse  of  the  people  at  large.  His  social 
legislation  was  based  in  the  same  fashion  on  principles 
which  had  already  been  brought  into  practical  working  by 
Henry  the  Second.  It  was  ro  doubt  in  great  measure 
owing  to  this  practical  sense  of  its  financial  and  adminis- 
trative value  rather  than  to  any  foresight  of  its  political 
importance  that  we  owe  Edward's  organization  of  our  Par- 
liament. But  if  the  institutions  which  we  commonly  as- 
sociate with  his  name  owe  their  origin  to  others,  they  owe 
their  form  and  their  perpetuity  to  him. 

The  King's  English  policy,  like  his  English  name,  was 
in  fact  the  sign  of  a  new  epoch.  England  was  made.  The 
long  period  of  national  formation  had  come  practically  to 
an  end.  With  the  reign  of  Edward  begins  the  constitu- 
tional England  in  which  we  live.  It  is  not  that  any  chasm 
separates  our  history  before  it  from  our  history  after  it,  as 
the  chasm  of  the  Revolution  divides  the  history  of  France, 
for  we  have  traced  the  rudiments  of  our  constitution  to  the 
first  moment  of  the  English  settlement  in  Britain.  But  it 
is  with  these  as  with  our  language.  The  tongue  of  JElfred 
is  the  very  tongue  we  speak,  but  in  spite  of  its  identity 
with  modern  English  it  has  to  be  learned  like  the  tongue  of 
a  stranger.  On  the  other  hand,  the  English  of  Chaucer  is 
almost  as  intelligible  as  our  own.     In  the  first  the  histo- 


328  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III 

rian  aud  pliilologer  can  study  the  origin  and  development 
of  our  national  speech,  in  the  last  a  school-boy  can  enjoy 
the  story  of  Troilus  and  Cressida  or  listen  to  the  gay  chat 
of  the  Canterbury  Pilgrims.  In  precisely  the  same  way 
a  knowledge  of  our  earliest  laws  is  indispensable  for  the 
right  understanding  of  later  legislation,  its  origin  and  its 
development,  while  the  principles  of  our  Parliamentary 
system  must  necessarily  be  studied  in  the  Meetings  of 
Wise  Men  before  the  Conquest  or  the  Great  Council  of 
barons  after  it.  But  the  Parliaments  which  Edward  gath- 
ered at  the  close  of  his  reign  are  not  merely  illustrative  of 
the  history  of  later  Parliaments,  they  are  absolutely  iden- 
tical with  those  which  still  sit  at  St.  Stephen's.  At  the 
close  of  his  reign  King,  Lords,  Commons,  the  Courts  of 
Justice,  the  forms  of  public  administration,  the  relations 
of  Church  and  State,  all  local  divisions  and  provincial 
jurisdictions,  in  great  measure  the  framework  of  society 
itself,  have  taken  the  shape  which  they  essentially  retain. 
In  a  word,  the  long  struggle  of  the  constitution  for  actual 
existence  has  come  to  an  end.  The  contests  which  foUow 
are  not  contests  that  tell,  like  those  that  preceded  them,  on 
the  actual  fabric  of  our  institutions ;  they  are  simply  stages 
in  the  rough  discipline  by  which  England  has  learned  and 
is  still  learning  how  best  to  use  and  how  wisely  to  develop 
the  latent  powers  of  its  national  life,  how  to  adjust  the  bal- 
ance of  its  social  and  political  forces,  how  to  adapt  its  con- 
stitutional forms  to  the  varying  conditions  of  the  time. 

The  news  of  his  father's  death  found  Edward  at  Capua 
in  the  opening  of  1273;  but  the  quiet  of  his  realm  under 
a  regency  of  which  Roger  Mortimer  was  the  practical  head 
left  him  free  to  move  slowly  homeward.  Two  of  his  acts 
while  thus  journeying  through  Italy  show  that  his  mind 
was  already  dwelling  on  the  state  of  English  finance  and 
of  English  law.  His  visit  to  the  Pope  at  Orvieto  was  with 
a  view  of  gaining  permission  to  levy  from  the  clergy  a 
tenth  of  their  income  for  the  three  coming  years,  while  he 
drew  from  Bologna  its  most  eminent'  jurist,  Francesco  Ac- 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  32« 

cursi,  to  aid  in  the  task  of  legal  reform.  At  Paris  he  did 
homage  to  Philip  the  Third  for  his  French  possessions, 
and  then  turning  southward  he  devoted  a  year  to  the  or- 
dering of  Gascony.  It  was  not  till  the  summer  of  12?4 
that  «the  King  reached  England.  But  he  had  already 
planned  the  w^ork  he  had  to  do,  and  the  measures  which 
he  laid  before  the  Parliament  of  1275  were  signs  of  the 
spirit  in  which  he  was  to  set  about  it.  The  First  Statute 
of  Westminster  was  rather  a  code  than  a  statute.  It  con- 
tained no  less  than  fifty-one  clauses,  and  was  an  attempt 
to  summarize  a  number  of  previous  enactments  contained 
in  the  Great  Charter,  the  Provisions  of  Oxford,  and  the 
Statute  of  Marlborough,  as  well  as  to  embody  some  of  the 
administrative  measures  of  Henry  the  Second  and  his  son. 
But  a  more  pressing  need  than  that  of  a  codification  of  the 
law  was  the  need  of  a  reorganization  of  finance.  While 
the  necessities  of  the  Crown  were  growing  with  the  widen- 
ing of  its  range  of  administrative  action,  the  revenues  of 
the  Crown  admitted  of  no  corresponding  expansion.  In 
the  earliest  times  of  oiir  history  the  outgoings  of  the  Crown 
were  as  small  as  its  income.  AU  local  expenses,  whether 
for  Justice  or  road-making  or  fortress-building,  were  paid 
by  local  funds;  and  the  national  "fyrd"  served  at  its  own 
cost  in  the  field.  The  produce  of  a  king's  private  estates 
with  the  provisions  due  to  him  from  the  public  lands  scat- 
tered over  each  county,  whether  gathered  by  the  King 
himself  as  he  moved  over  his  realm,  or  as  in  later  days 
fixed  at  a  stated  rate  and  collected  by  his  sheriff,  were 
sufficient  to  defray  the  mere  expenses  of  the  Court.  The 
Danish  wars  gave  the  first  shock  to  this  simple  system. 
To  raise  a  ransom  which  freed  the  land  from  the  invader, 
the  first  land-tax,  under  the  name  of  the  Danegeld,  was 
laid  on  every  hide  of  ground ;  and  to  this  national  taxation 
the  Norman  kings  added  the  feudal  burdens  of  the  new 
military  estates  created  by  the  Conquest,  reliefs  paid  on 
inheritance,  profits  of  marriages  and  wardship,  and  the 
three  feudal  aids.     But  foreign  warfare  soon  exhausted 


3'M)  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 


these  means  of  revenue ;  the  barons  and  bishops  in  their 
Great  Council  were  called  on  at  each  emergency  for  a  grant 
from  their  lands,  and  at  each  grant  a  corresponding  de- 
mand was  made  by  the  King  as  a  landlord  on  the  towns, 
as  lying  for  the  most  part  in  the  royal  demesne.  The  ces- 
sation of  Danegeld  under  Henry  the  Second  and  his  levy 
of  scutage  made  little  change  in  the  general  incidence  of 
taxation:  it  still  fell  wholly  on  the  land,  for  even  the  towns- 
men paid  as  holders  of  their  tenements.  But  a  new  prin- 
ciple of  taxation  was  disclosed  in  the  tithe  levied  for  a 
Crusade  at  the  close  of  Henry's  reign.  Land  was  no  longer 
the  only  source  of  wealth.  The  growth  of  national  pros- 
perity, of  trade  and  commerce,  was  creating  a  mass  of  per- 
sonal property  which  offered  irresistible  temptations  to  the 
Angevin  financiers.  The  old  revenue  from  landed  property 
was  restricted  and  lessened  by  usage  and  compositions. 
Scutage  was  only  due  for  foreign  campaigns :  the  feudal 
aids  only  on  rare  and  stated  occasions:  and  though  the 
fines  from  the  shire-courts  grew  with  the  growth  of  society, 
the  dues  from  the  public  lands  were  fixed  and  incapable  of 
development.  But  no  usage  fettered  the  Crown  in  dealing 
with  personal  property,  and  its  growth  in  value  promised 
a  growing  revenue.  From  the  close  of  Henry  the  Second's 
reign  therefore  this  became  the  most  common  form  of  tax- 
ation. Grr4,nts  of  from  a  seventh  to  a  thirtieth  of  mova- 
bles, household-property,  and  stock  were  demanded ;  and 
it  was  the  necessity  of  procuring  their  assent  to  these  de- 
mands which  enabled  the  baronage  through  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  Third  to  bring  a  financial  pressure  to  bear  on 
the  Crown. 

But  in  addition  to  these  two  forms  of  direct  taxation  in- 
direct taxation  also  was  coming  more  and  more  to  the  front. 
The  right  of  the  King  to  grant  licenses  to  bring  goods  into 
or  to  trade  within  the  realm,  a  right  springing  from  the 
need  for  his  protection  felt  by  the  strangers  who  came  there 
for  purposes  of  traffic,  laid  the  foundation  of  our  taxes  on 
imports.     Those  on  exports  were  only  a  part  of  the  general 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204-1291.  331 


system  of  taxing  personal  property  which  we  have  already 
noticed.  How  tempting  this  source  of  revenue  was  prov- 
ing we  see  from  a  provision  of  the  Great  Charter  which 
forbids  the  levy  of  more  than  the  ancient  customs  on  mer- 
chants entering  or  leaving  the  realm.  Commerce  was  in 
fact  growing  with  the  growing  wealth  of  the  people.  The 
crowd  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  buildings  which  date  from 
this  period  shows  the  prosperity  of  the  country.  Christian 
architecture  reached  its  highest  beauty  in  the  opening  of 
Edward's  reign;  a  reign  marked  by  the  completion  of  the 
abbey  church  of  Westminster  and  of  the  cathedral  church 
at  Salisbury.  An  English  noble  was  proud  to  be  styled 
"an  incomparable  builder,"  while  some  traces  of  the  art 
which  was  rising  into  life  across  the  Alps  flowed  in,  it 
may  be,  with  the  Italian  ecclesiastics  whom  the  Papacy 
forced  on  the  English  Church.  The  shrine  of  the  Con- 
fessor at  Westminster,  the  mosaic  pavement  beside  the 
altar  of  the  abbey,  the  paintings  on  the  walls  of  its  chap- 
ter-house remind  us  of  the  schools  which  were  springing 
up  under  Giotto  and  the  Pisans.  But  the  wealth  which 
this  art  progress  shows  drew  trade  to  English  shores. 
England  was  as  yet  simply  an  agricultural  country.  Gas- 
cony  sent  her  wines;  her  linens  were  furnished  by  the 
looms  of  Ghent  and  Liege ;  Genoese  vessels  brought  to  her 
fairs  the  silks,  the  velvets,  the  glass  of  Italy.  In  the  barks 
of  the  Hanse  merchants  came  fur  and  amber  from  the  Bal- 
tic, herrings,  pitch,  timber,  and  naval  stores  from  the 
countries  of  the  north.  Spain  sent  us  iron  and  war-horses. 
Milan  sent  armor.  The  great  Venetian  merchant-galleys 
touched  the  southern  coasts  and  left  in  our  ports  the  dates 
of  Egypt,  the  figs  and  currants  of  Greece,  the  silk  of  Sicily, 
the  sugar  of  Cyprus  and  Crete,  the  spices  of  the  Eastern 
seas.  Capital  too  came  from  abroad.  The  bankers  of 
Florence  and  Lucca  were  busy  with  loans  to  the  court  or 
vast  contracts  with  the  wool-growers.  The  bankers  of 
Cahors  had  already  dealt  a  death-blow  to  the  usury  of  the 
Jew.     Against  all  this  England  had  few  exports  to  set. 


332  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

The  lead  supplied  by  the  mines  of  Derbyshire,  the  salt  of 
the  Worcestershire  springs,  the  iron  of  the  Weald,  were 
almost  wholly  consumed  at  home.  The  one  metal  export 
of  any  worth  was  that  of  tin  from  the  tin-mines  of  Corn- 
wall. But  the  production  of  wool  was  fast  becoming  a 
main  element  of  the  nation's  wealth.  Flanders,  the  great 
manufacturing  country  of  the  time,  lay  fronting  our  east- 
ern coast ;  and  with  this  market  close  at  hand  the  pastures 
of  England  found  more  and  more  profit  in  the  supply  of 
wool.  The  Cistercian  order  which  possessed  vast  ranges 
of  moorland  in  Yorkshire  became  famous  as  wool-growers ; 
and  their  wool  had  been  seized  for  Richard's  ransom.  The 
Florentine  merchants  were  developing  this  trade  by  their 
immense  contracts ;  we  find  a  single  company  of  merchants 
contracting  for  the  purchase  of  the  Cistercian  wool  through- 
out the  year.  It  was  after  counsel  with  the  Italian  bank- 
ers that  Edward  devised  his  scheme  for  drawing  a  perma- 
nent revenue  from  this  source.  In  the  Parliament  of  1375 
he  obtained  the  grant  of  half  a  mark,  or  six  shillings  and 
eightpence,  on  each  sack  of  wool  exported ;  and  this  grant, 
a  grant  memorable  as  forming  the  first  legal  foundation  of 
our  customs-revenue,  at  once  relieved  the  necessities  of  the 
Crown. 

The  grant  of  the  wool  tax  enabled  Edward  in  fact  to 
deal  with  the  great  difficulty  of  his  realm.  The  troubles 
of  the  Barons'  war,  the  need  which  Earl  Simon  felt  of 
Llewelyn's  alliance  to  hold  in  check  the  Marcher-barons, 
had  all  but  shaken  off  from  Wales  the  last  traces  of  de- 
pendence. Even  at  the  close  of  the  war  the  threat  of  an 
attack  from  the  now  united  kingdom  only  forced  Llewelyn 
to  submission  on  a  practical  acknowledgment  of  his  sov- 
ereignty. Although  the  title  which  Llewelyn  ap  Jorwerth 
claimed  of  Prince  of  North  Wales  was  recognized  by  the 
English  court  in  the  earlier  days  of  Henry  the  Third,  it 
was  withdrawn  after  1229  and  its  claimant  known  only  as 
Prince  of  Aberffraw.  But  the  loftier  title  of  Prince  of 
Wales  which  Llewelyn  ap  Gryffydd  assumed  in  1256  was 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1291.  333 


formally  conceded  to  hira  in  1267,  and  his  right  to  receive 
homage  from  the  other  nobles  of  his  principality  was  for- 
mally sanctioned.  Near  however  as  he  seemed  to  the  final 
realization  of  his  aims,  Llewelyn  was  still  a  vassal  of  the 
English  crown,  and  the  accession  of  Edward  to  the  throne 
was  at  once  followed  by  the  demand  of  homage.  But  the 
summons  was  fruitless;  and  the  next  two  years  were 
wasted  in  as  fruitless  negotiation.  The  kingdom  however 
was  now  well  in  hand.  The  royal  treasury  was  filled 
again,  and  in  1277  Edward  marched  on  North  Wales. 
The  fabric  of  Welsh  greatness  fell  at  a  single  blow.  The 
chieftains  who  had  so  lately  sworn  fealty  to  Llewelyn  in 
the  southern  and  central  parts  of  the  country  deserted  him 
to  join  his  English  enemies  in  their  attack;  an  English 
fleet  reduced  Anglesea ;  and  the  Prince  was  cooped  up  in 
his  mountain  fastnesses  and  forced  to  throw  himself  on 
Edward's  mercy.  With  characteristic  moderation  the 
conqueror  contented  himself  with  adding  to  the  English 
dominions  the  coast-district  as  far  as  Conway  and  with 
providing  that  the  title  of  Prince  of  Wales  should  cease  at 
Llewelyn's  death.  A  heavy  fine  which  he  had  incurred 
by  his  refusal  to  do  homage  was  remitted ;  and  Eleanor, 
a  daughter  of  Earl  Simon  of  Montf  ort,  whom  he  had  sought 
as  his  wife  but  who  had  been  arrested  on  her  way  to  him, 
was  wedded  to  the  Prince  at  Edward's  court. 

For  four  years  all  was  quiet  across  the  Welsh  Marches, 
and  Edward  was  able  again  to  turn  his  attention  to  the 
work  of  internal  reconstruction.  It  is  probably  to  this 
time,  certainly  to  the  earlier  years  of  his  reign,  that  we 
may  attribute  his  modification  of  our  judicial  system. 
The  King's  Court  was  divided  into  three  distinct  tribu- 
nals, the  Court  of  Exchequer  which  took  cognizance  of  all 
causes  in  which  the  royal  revenue  was  concerned;  the 
Court  of  Common  Pleas  for  suits  between  private  persons ; 
and  the  King's  Bench,  which  had  jurisdiction  in  all  mat- 
ters that  affected  the  sovereign  as  well  as  in  "  pleas  of  the 
crown"  or  criminal  causes  expressly  reserved  for  his  de- 


334  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


cision.  Each  court  was  now  provided  with  a  distinct  staff 
of  judges.  Of  yet  greater  importance  than  this  change, 
which  was  in  effect  but  the  completion  of  a  process  of  sev- 
erance that  Imd  long  been  going  on,  was  the  establishment 
of  an  equitable  jurisdiction  side  by  side  with  that  of  the 
common  law.  In  his  reform  of  1178  Henry  the  Second 
broke  up  the  older  King's  Court,  which  had  till  then  served 
as  the  final  Court  of  Appeal,  by  the  severance  of  the  purely 
'legal  judges  who  had  been  gradually  added  to  it  from  the 
general  body  of  his  councillors.  The  judges  thus  severed 
from  the  Council  retained  the  name  and  the  ordinary  ju- 
risdiction of  "  the  King's  Court,"  but  the  mere  fact  of  their 
severance  changed  in  an  essential  way  the  character  of  the 
justice  they  dispensed.  The  King  in  Council  wielded  a 
power  which  was  not  only  judicial  but  executive;  his  de- 
cisions though  based  upon  custom  were  not  fettered  by  it ; 
they  were  the  expressions  of  his  will,  and  it  was  as  his 
will  that  they  w^ere  carried  out  by  officers  of  the  Crown. 
But  the  separate  bench  of  judges  had  no  longer  this  un- 
limited power  at  their  command.  They  had  not  the  King's 
right  as  representative  of  the  community  to  make  the  law 
for  the  redress  of  a  wrong.  They  professed  simply  to  de- 
clare what  the  existing  law  was,  even  if  it  was  insufficient 
for  the  full  purpose  of  redress.  The  authority  of  their  de- 
cision rested  mainly  on  their  adhesion  to  ancient  custom, 
or  as  it  was  styled  the  "common  law,"  which  had  grown 
up  in  the  past.  Thej^  could  enforce  their  decisions  only 
by  directions  to  an  independent  officer,  the  sheriff,  and 
here  again  their  right  was  soon  rigidly  bounded  by  set  form 
and  custom.  These  bonds  in  fact  became  tighter  every 
day,  for  their  decisions  were  now  beginning  to  be  reported, 
and  the  cases  decided  by  one  bench  of  judges  became  au- 
thorities for  their  successors.  It  is  plain  that  such  a  state 
of  things  has  the  utmost  value  in  many  ways,  whether  in 
creating  in  men's  minds  that  impersonal  notion  of  a  sover- 
eign law  which  exercises  its  imaginative  force  on  human 
action,  or  in  furnishing  by  the  accumulation  and  sacred- 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  335 


ness  of  precedents  a  barrier  against  the  invasion  of  arbi- 
trary power.  But  it  threw  a  terrible  obstacle  in  the  way 
of  the  actual  redress  of  wrong.  The  increasing  complexity 
of  human  action  as  civilization  advanced  outstripped  the 
efforts  of  the  law.  Sometimes  ancient  custom  furnished 
no  redress  for  a  wrong  which  sprang  from  modern  ciwum- 
stances.  Sometimes  the  very  pedantry  and  inflexibility  of 
the  law  itself  became  in  individual  cases  the  highest  in- 
justice. 

It  was  the  consciousness  of  this  that  made  men  cling 
even  from  the  first  moment  of  the  independent  existence  of 
these  courts  to  the  judicial  power  which  still  remained  in- 
herent in  the  Crown  itself.  If  his  courts  fell  short  in  any 
matter  the  duty  of  the  King  to  do  justice  to  all  still  re- 
mained, and  it  was  this  obligation  which  was  recognized 
in  the  provision  of  Henry  the  Second  by  which  all  cases 
in  which  his  judges  failed  to  do  justice  were  reserved  for 
the  special  cognizance  of  the  royal  Council  itself.  To  this 
final  jurisdiction  of  the  King  in  Council  Edward  gave  a 
wide  development.  His  assembly  of  the  ministers,  the 
higher  permanent  ofiicials,  and  the  law  officers  of  the 
Crown  for  the  first  time  reserved  to  itself  in  its  judicial 
capacity  the  correction  of  all  breaches  of  the  law  which 
the  lower  courts  had  failed  to  repress,  whether  from  weak- 
ness, partiality,  or  corruption,  and  especially  of  those  law- 
less outbreaks  of  the  more  powerful  baronage  which  defied 
the  common  authority  of  the  judges.  Such  powers  were 
of  course  capable  of  terrible  abuse,  and  it  shows  what  real 
need  there  was  felt  to  be  for  their  exercise  that  though  re- 
garded with  jealousy  by  Parliament  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  royal  Council  appears  to  have  been  steadily  put  into 
force  through  the  two  centuries  wliich  followed.  In  the 
reign  of  Henry  the  Seventh  it  took  legal  and  statutory  form 
in  the  shape  of  the  Court  of  Star  Chamber,  and  its  powers 
are  still  exercised  in  our  own  day  by  the  Judicial  Com^ 
mittee  of  the  Privy  Council.  But  the  same  duty  of  the 
Crown  to  do  justice  where  its  courts  fell  short  of  giving 


yM<  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE.     [Book  III 

due  redress  for  wrong  expressed  itself  in  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  Chancellor.  This  great  officer  of  State,  who  had 
perhaps  originally  acted  only  as  President  of  the  Council 
when  discharging  its  judicial  functions,  acquired  at  a 
very  early  date  an  independent  judicial  position  of  the 
same  nature.  It  is  by  remembering  this  origin  of  the 
Court  of  Chancery  that  we  understand  the  nature  of  the 
powers  it  gradually  acquired.  All  grievances  of  the  sub- 
ject, especially  those  which  sprang  from  the  misconduct  of 
government  officials  or  of  powerful  oppressors,  fell  within 
its  cognizance  as  they  fell  within  that  of  the  Royal  Coun- 
cil, and  to  these  were  added  disputes  respecting  the  ward- 
ship of  infants,  dower,  rent-charges,  or  tithes.  Its  equit- 
able jurisdiction  sprang  from  the  defective  nature  and  the 
technical  and  unbending  rules  of  the  common  law.  As 
the  Council  had  given  redress  in  cases  where  law  became 
injustice,  so  the  Court  of  Chancery  interfered  without  re- 
gard to  the  rules  of  procedure  adopted  by  the  common  law 
courts  on  the  petition  of  a  party  for  whose  grievance  the 
common  law  provided  no  adequate  remedy.  An  analogous 
extension  of  his  powers  enabled  the  Chancellor  to  afford 
relief  in  cases  of  fraud,  accident,  or  abuse  of  trust,  and 
this  side  of  his  jurisdiction  was  largely  extended  at  a  later 
time  by  the  results  of  legislation  on  the  tenure  of  land  by 
ecclesiastical  bodies.  The  separate  powers  of  the  Chan- 
cellor, whatever  was  the  original  date  at  which  they  were 
first  exercised,  seem  to  have  been  thoroughly  established 
under  Edward  the  First. 

What  reconciled  the  nation  to  the  exercise  of  powers 
such  as  these  by  the  Crown  and  its  council  was  the  need 
which  was  still  to  exist  for  centuries  of  an  effective  means 
of  bringing  the  baronage  within  the  reach  of  the  law. 
Constitutionally  the  position  of  the  English  nobles  had  now 
become  established.  A  King  could  no  longer  make  laws 
or  levy  taxes  or  even  make  war  without  their  assent.  The 
nation  reposed  in  them  an  unwavering  trust,  for  they  were 
no  longer  the  brutal  foreigners  from  whose  violence  the 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  337 

strong  hand  of  a  Norman  ruler  had  been  needed  to  protect 
his  subjects ;  they  were  as  English  as  the  peasant  or  the 
trader.  They  had  won  English  liberty  by  their  swords, 
and  the  tradition  of  their  order  bound  them  to  look  on 
themselves  as  its  natural  guardians.  The  close  of  the 
Barons'  War  solved  the  problem  which  had  so  long  troubled 
the  realm,  the  problem  how  to  ensure  the  government  of 
the  realm  in  accordance  with  the  provisions  of  the  Great 
Charter,  by  the  transfer  of  the  business  of  administration 
into  the  hands  of  a  standing  committee  of  the  greater 
barons  and  prelates,  acting  as  chief  officers  of  state  in  con- 
junction with  specially  appointed  ministers  of  the  Crown. 
The  body  thus  composed  was  kno^\Ti  as  the  Continual  Coun- 
cil ;  and  the  quiet  government  of  the  kingdom  by  this  body 
in  the  long  interval  between  the  death  of  Henry  the  Third 
and  his  son's  return  shows  how  effective  this  rule  of  the 
nobles  was.  It  is  significant  of  the  new  relation  which 
they  were  to  strive  to  establish  between  themselves  and 
the  Crown  that  in  the  brief  which  announced  Edward's 
accession  the  Council  asserted  that  the  new  monarch 
mounted  his  throne  "  by  the  will  of  the  peers."  But  while 
the  political  influence  of  the  baronage  as  a  leading  element 
in  the  whole  nation  thus  steadily  mounted,  the  personal 
and  purely  feudal  power  of  each  individual  baron  on  his 
own  estates  as  steadily  fell.  The  hold  which  the  Crown 
gained  on  every  noble  family  by  its  rights  of  wardship  and 
marriage,  the  circuits  of  the  royal  judges,  the  ever  nar- 
rowing bounds  within  which  baronial  justice  saw  itself 
circumscribed,  the  blow  dealt  by  scutage  at  their  military 
power,  the  prompt  intervention  of  the  Council  in  their 
feuds,  lowered  the  nobles  more  and  more  to  the  common 
level  of  their  fellow  subjects.  Much  yet  remained  to  be 
done ;  for  within  the  general  body  of  the  baronage  there 
existed  side  by  side  with  the  nobles  whose  aims  were  purely 
national  nobles  who  saw  in  the  overthrow  of  the  royal  des- 
potism simpl}'  a  chance  of  setting  up  again  their  feudal 
privileges ;  and  different  as  the  English  baronage,  taken  as 
Vol.  I. —22 


338  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 


a  whole,  was  from  a  feudal  noblesse  like  that  of  Germany 
or  France  there  is  in  every  military  class  a  natural  drift 
toward  violence  and  lawlessness.  Throughout  Edward's 
reign  his  strong  hand  was  needed  to  enforce  order  on  war- 
ring nobles.  Great  earls,  such  as  those  of  Gloucester  and 
Hereford,  carried  on  private  war;  in  Shropshire  the  Earl 
of  Arundel  waged  his  feud  with  Fulk  Fitz-  Warine.  To 
the  lesser  and  poorer  nobles  the  wealth  of  the  trader,  the 
long  wain  of  goods  as  it  passed  along  the  highway,  re- 
mained a  tempting  prey.  Once,  under  cover  of  a  mock 
tournament  of  monks  against  canons,  a  band  of  country 
gentlemen  succeeded  in  introducing  themselves  into  the 
great  merchant  fair  at  Boston ;  at  nightfall  every  booth  was 
on  fire,  the  merchants  robbed  and  slaughtered,  and  the 
booty  carried  off  to  ships  which  lay  ready  at  the  quay. 
Streams  of  gold  and  silver,  ran  the  tale  of  jDopular  horror, 
flowed  melted  down  the  gutters  to  the  sea ;  "  all  the  money 
in  England  could  hardly  make  good  the  loss."  Even  at 
the  close  of  Edward's  reign  lawless  bands  of  "  trail-bas- 
tons,"  or  club-men,  maintained  themselves  by  general  out- 
rage, aided  the  country  nobles  in  their  feuds,  and  wrested 
money  and  goods  from  the  great  tradesmen. 

The  King  was  strong  enough  to  face  and  imprison  the 
warring  earls,  to  hang  the  chiefs  of  the  Boston  marauders, 
and  to  suppress  the  outlaws  by  rigorous  commissions.  But 
the  repression  of  baronial  outrage  was  only  a  part  of  Ed- 
ward's policy  in  relation  to  the  Baronage.  Here,  as  else- 
where, he  had  to  carry  out  the  political  policy  of  his  house, 
a  policy  defined  by  the  great  measures  of  Henry  the  Sec- 
ond, his  institution  of  scutage,  his  general  assize  of  arms, 
his  extension  of  the  itinerant  judicature  of  the  royal  judges. 
Forced  by  the  first  to  an  exact  discharge  of  their  military 
duties  to  the  Crown,  set  by  the  second  in  the  midst  of  a 
people  trained  equally  with  the  nobles  to  arms,  their  judi- 
cial tyranny  curbed  and  subjected  to  the  King's  justice  by 
the  third,  the  barons  had  been  forced  from  their  old  stand- 
point of  an  isolated  class  to  the  new  and  nobler  position  of 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1291.  339 

a  people's  leaders.  Edward  watched  jealously  over  the 
ground  which  the  Crown  had  gained.  Immediately  after 
his  landing  he  appointed  a  commission  of  inquiry  into  the 
judicial  franchises  then  existing,  and  on  its  report  (of  which 
the  existing  "  Hundred-Rolls"  are  the  result)  itinerant  jus- 
tices were  sent  in  1278  to  discover  by  what  right  these 
franchises  were  held.  The  writs  of  *'  quo  warranto"  were 
roughly  met  here  and  there.  Earl  Warenne  bared  a  rusty 
sword  and  flung  it  on  the  justices'  table.  "This,  sirs,"  he 
said,  "is  my  warrant.  By  the  sword  our  fathers  won 
their  lands  when  they  came  over  with  the  Conqueror,  and 
by  the  sword  we  will  keep  them."  But  the  King  was  far 
from  limiting  himself  to  the  mere  carrying  out  of  the  plans 
of  Henry  the  Second.  Henry  had  aimed  simply  at  lower- 
ing the  power  of  the  great  feudatories;  Edward  aimed 
rather  at  neutralizing  their  power  by  raising  the  whole 
body  of  landowners  to  the  same  level.  We  shall  see  at  a 
later  time  the  measures  which  were  the  issues  of  this  pol- 
icy, but  in  the  very  opening  of  his  reign  a  significant  step 
pointed  to  the  King's  drift.  In  the  summer  of  1278  a 
roj^al  writ  ordered  all  freeholders  who  held  lands  to  the 
value  of  twenty  pounds  to  receive  knighthood  at  the  King's 
hands. 

Acts  as  significant  announced  Edward's  purpose  of  car- 
rying out  another  side  of  Henry's  policy,  that  of  limiting 
in  the  same  way  the  independent  jurisdiction  of  the  Church. 
He  was  resolute  to  force  it  to  become  thoroughly  national 
by  bearing  its  due  part  of  the  common  national  burdens, 
and  to  break  its-  growing  dependence  upon  Rome.  But 
the  ecclesiastical  body  was  jealous  of  its  position  as  a 
power  distinct  from  the  power  of  the  Crown,  and  Edward's 
policy  had  hardly  declared  itself  when  in  1279  Archbishop 
Peckham  obtained  a  canon  from  the  clergy  by  which  copies 
of  the  Great  Charter,  with  its  provisions  in  favor  of  the 
liberties  of  the  Church,  were  to  be  affixed  to  the  doors  of 
churches.  The  step  was  meant  as  a  defiant  protest  against 
all  interference,  and  it  was  promptly  forbidden.     An  order 


340  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


issued  by  the  Primate  to  the  clergy  to  declare  to  their  flocks 
the  seDteuces  of  excommunication  directed  against  all  who 
obtained  royal  writs  to  obstruct  suits  in  church  courts,  or 
who,  whether  royal  officers  or  no,  neglected  to  enforce  their 
sentences,  was  answered  in  a  yet  more  emphatic  way.  By 
fallinsr  into  the  "  dead  hand"  or  "  mortmain"  of  the  Church 
land  ceased  to  render  its  feudal  services;  and  in  1279  the 
Statute  "de  Religiosis,"  or  as  it  is  commonl}^  called  "of 
Mortmain,"  forbade  any  further  alienation  of  land  to  re- 
ligious bodies  in  such  wise  that  it  should  cease  to  render 
its  due  service  to  the  King.  The  restriction  was  probably 
no  beneficial  one  to  the  country  at  large,  for  Churchmen 
were  the  best  landlords,  and  it  was  soon  evaded  by  the  in- 
genuity of  the  clerical  lawyers ;  but  it  marked  the  growing 
jealousy  of  any  attempt  to  set  aside  what  was  national  from 
serving  the  general  need  and  profit  of  the  nation.  Its  im- 
mediate effect  was  to  stir  the  clergy  to  a  bitter  resentment. 
But  Edward  remained  firm,  and  when  the  bishops  pro- 
posed to  restrict  the  royal  courts  from  dealing  with  causes 
of  patronage  or  causes  which  touched  the  chattels  of  Cburch- 
men  he  met  their  proposals  by  an  instant  prohibition. 

The  resentment  of  the  clergy  had  soon  the  means  of 
showing  itself  during  a  new  struggle  with  Wales.  The 
persuasions  of  his  brother  David,  who  had  deserted  him 
in  the  previous  war  but  who  deemed  his  desertion  insuffi- 
ciently rewarded  by  an  English  lordship,  roused  Llewelyn 
to  a  fresh  revolt.  A  prophecy  of  Merlin  was  said  to  prom- 
ise that  when  English  money  became  round  a  Prince  of 
Wales  should  be  crowned  in  London ;  and  at  this  moment 
a  new  coinage  of  copper  money,  coupled  with  a  prohibition 
to  break  the  silver  penny  into  halves  and  quarters,  as  had 
been  commonly  done,  was  supposed  to  fulfil  the  prediction. 
In  1282  Edward  marched  in  overpowering  strength  into 
the  heart  of  Wales.  But  Llewelyn  held  out  in  Snowdon 
with  the  stubbornness  of  despair,  and  the  rout  of  an  Eng- 
lish force  which  had  crossed  into  Anglesea  prolonged  the 
contest  into  the  winter.     The  cost  of  the  war  fell  on  the 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  341 

King's  treasury,  Edward  had  called  for  but  one  general 
grant  through  the  past  eight  years  of  his  reign ;  but  he 
was  now  forced  to  appeal  to  his  people,  and  by  an  expedi- 
ent hitherto  without  precedent  two  provincial  Councils 
were  called  for  this  purpose.  That  for  Southern  England 
met  at  Northampton,  that  for  Northern  at  York ;  and  clergy 
and  laity  were  summoned,  though  in  separate  session,  to 
both.  Two  knights  came  from  every  shire,  two  burgesses 
from  every  borough,  while  the  bishops  brought  their  arch- 
deacons, abbots,  and  the  proctors  of  their  cathedral  clergy. 
The  grant  of  the  laity  was  quick  and  liberal.  But  both 
at  York  and  Northampton  the  clergy  showed  their  grudge 
at  Edward's  measures  by  long  delays  in  supplying  his 
treasury.  Pinched  however  as  were  his  resources  and  ter- 
rible as  were  the  sufferings  of  his  army  through  the  win- 
ter Edward's  firmness  remained  vmbroken;  and  rejecting 
all  suggestions  of  retreat  he  issued  orders  for  the  formation 
of  a  new  army  at  Caermarthen  to  complete  the  circle  of  in- 
vestment round  Llewelyn.  But  the  war  came  suddenly 
to  an  end.  The  Prince  sallied  from  his  mountain  hold  for 
a  raid  upon  Radnorshire  and  fell  in  a  petty  skirmish  on 
the  banks  of  the  Wye.  With  him  died  the  independence 
of  his  race.  After  six  months  of  flight  his  brother  David 
was  made  prisoner ;  and  a  Parliament  summoned  at  Shrews- 
bury in  the  autumn  of  1283,  to  which  each  county  again 
sent  its  two  knights  and  twenty  boroughs  their  two  bur 
gesses,  sentenced  him  to  a  traitor's  death.  The  submission 
of  the  lesser  chieftains  soon  followed :  and  the  country  was 
secured  by  the  building  of  strong  castles  at  Conway  and 
Caernarvon,  and  the  settlerrent  of  English  barons  on  the 
confiscated  soil.  The  Statute  or  Wales  which  Edward 
promulgated  at  Rhuddlan  in  1284  proposed  to  introduce 
English  law  and  the  English  administration  of  justice  and 
government  into  Wales.  But  little  came  of  the  attempt; 
and  it  was  not  till  the  time  of  Henry  the  Eighth  that  the 
country  was  actually  incorporated  with  England  and  rep- 
resented in  the  English  Parliament.     What  Edward  had 


342  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III 


really  done  was  to  break  the  Welsh  resistance.  The  policy 
with  which  he  followed  up  his  victory  (for  the  "  massacre 
of  the  bards"  is  a  mere  fable)  accomplished  its  end,  and 
though  two  later  rebellions  and  a  ceaseless  strife  of  the 
natives  with  the  English  towns  in  their  midst  showed  that 
the  country  was  still  far  from  being  reconciled  to  its  con- 
quest, it  ceased  to  be  any  serious  danger  to  England  for  a 
hundred  years. 

From  the  work  of  conquest  Edward  again  turned  to  the 
work  of  legislation.      In  the  midst  of  his  struggle  with 
Wales  he  had  shown  his  care  for  the  commercial  classes 
by  a  Statute  of  Merchants  in  1283,  which  provided  for  the 
registration  of  the  debts  of  traders  and  for  their  recovery 
by  distraint  of  the  debtor's  goods  and  the  imprisonment  of 
his  person.     The  close  of  the  war  saw  two  measures  of 
even  greater  importance.     The  second  Statute  of  West- 
minster which  appeared  in  1285  is  a  code  of  the  same  sort 
as  the  first,  amending  the  Statutes  of  Mortmain,  of  Merton, 
and  of  Gloucester  as  well  as  the  laws  of  dower  and  advow- 
sou,  remodelling  the  system  of  justices  of  assize,  and  curb- 
ing the  abuses  of  manorial  jurisdiction.     In  the  same  year 
appeared  the  greatest  of  Edward's  measures  for  the  en- 
forcement of  public  order.    The  Statute  of  Winchester  re- 
vived and  reorganized  the  old  institutions  of  national  police 
and  national  defence.     It  regulated  the  action  of  the  hun- 
dred, the  duty  of  watch  and  ward,  and  the  gathering  of 
the  fyrd  or  militia  of  the  realm  as  Henry  the  Second  had 
moulded  it  into  form  in  his  Assize  of  Arms.     Every  man 
was  bound  to  hold  hia\self  in  readiness,  duly  armed,  for 
the  King's  service  in  case  of  invasion  or  revolt,  and  to 
pursue  felons  when  hue  and  cry  were  made  after  them. 
Every  district  was  held  responsible  for  crimes  committed 
within  its  bounds ;  the  gates  of  each  town  were  to  be  shut 
at  nightfall ;  and  all  strangers  were  required  to  give  an 
account  of  themselves  to  the  magistrates  of  any  borough 
which  they  entered.     By  a  provision  which  illustrates  at 
once  the  social  and  physical  condition  of  the  country  at  the 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  343 

time  all  brushwood  was  ordered  to  be  destroyed  within  a 
space  of  two  hundred  feet  on  either  side  of  the  public  high- 
way as  a  security  for  travellers  against  sudden  attacks 
from  robbers.  To  enforce  the  observance  of  this  act 
knights  were  appointed  in  every  shire  under  the  name  of 
Conservators  of  the  Peace,  a  name  which  as  the  benetit  of 
these  local  magistrates  was  more  sensibly  felt  and  their 
powers  were  more  largely  extended  was  changed  into  that 
which  they  still  retain  of  Justices  of  the  Peace.  So  or- 
derly however  was  the  realm  that  Edward  was  able  in  1286 
to  pass  over  sea  to  his  foreign  dominions,  and  to  spend  the 
next  three  years  in  reforming  their  government.  But  the 
want  of  his  guiding  hand  was  at  last  felt ;  and  the  Parlia- 
ment of  1289  refused  a  new  tax  till  the  King  came  home 
again. 

He  returned  to  find  the  Earls  of  Gloucester  and  Here- 
ford at  war,  and  his  judges  charged  with  violence  and  cor- 
ruption. The  two  Earls  were  brought  to  peace,  and  Earl 
Gilbert  allied  closely  to  the  royal  house  by  a  marriage  with 
the  King's  daughter  Johanna.  After  a  careful  investiga- 
tion the  judicial  abuses  were  recognized  and  amended. 
Two  of  the  chief  justices  were  banished  from  the  realm 
and  their  colleagues  imprisoned  and  fined.  But  these  ad- 
ministrative measures  were  only  preludes  to  a  great  legis- 
lative act  which  appeared  in  1290.  The  Third  Statute  of 
Westminster,  or,  to  use  the  name  by  which  it  is  more  com- 
monly known,  the  Statute  "Quia  Emptores,"  is  one  of 
those  legislative  efforts  which  mark  the  progress  of  a  wide 
social  revolution  in  the  country  at  large.  The  number  of 
the  greater  barons  was  diminishing  every  day,  while  the 
number  of  the  country  gentry  and  of  the  more  substantial 
yeomanry  was  increasing  with  the  increase  of  the  national 
wealth.  The  increase  showed  itself  in  a  growing  desire 
to  become  proprietors  of  land.  Tenants  of  the  barons  re- 
ceived under-tenants  on  condition  of  their  rendering  them 
similar  services  to  those  which  they  themselves  rendered 
to  their  lords ;  and  the  baronage,  while  duly  receiving  the 


344  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


services  in  compensation  for  which  they  had  originally 
granted  their  lands  in  fee,  saw  with  jealousy  the  feudal 
profits  of  these  new  under-tenants,  the  profits  of  wardships 
or  of  reliefs  and  the  like,  in  a  word  the  whole  increase  in 
the  value  of  the  estate  consequent  on  its  subdivision  and 
higher  cultivation  passing  into  other  hands  than  their  own. 
The  purpose  of  the  statute  "  Quia  Emptores"  was  to  check 
this  process  by  providing  that  in  any  case  of  alienation 
the  sub-tenant  should  henceforth  hold,  not  of  the  tenant, 
but  directly  of  the  superior  lord.  But  its  result  was  to 
promote  instead  of  hindering  the  transfer  and  subdivision 
of  land.  The  tenant  who  was  compelled  before  the  pass- 
ing of  the  statute  to  retain  in  any  case  so  much  of  the  es- 
tate as  enabled  him  to  discharge  his  feudal  services  to  the 
over-lord  of  whom  he  held  it,  was  now  enabled  by  a  pro- 
cess analogous  to  the  modern  sale  of  "tenant-right,"  to 
transfer  both  land  and  services  to  new  holders.  However 
small  the  estates  thus  created  might  be,  the  bulk  were  held 
directly  of  the  Crown ;  and  this  class  of  lesser  gentry  and 
freeholders  grew  steadily  from  this  time  in  numbers  and 
importance. 

The  year  which  saw  "  Quia  Emptores"  saw  a  step  which 
remains  the  great  blot  upon  Edward's  reign.  The  work 
abroad  had  exhausted  the  royal  treasury,  and  he  bought  a 
grant  from  his  Parliament  by  listening  to  their  wishes  in 
the  matter  of  the  Jews.  Jewish  traders  had  followed  Wil- 
liam the  Conqueror  from  Normandy,  and  had  been  enabled 
by  his  protection  to  establish  themselves  in  separate  quar- 
ters or  "Jewries"  in  all  larger  English  towns.  The  Jew 
had  no  right  or  citizenship  in  the  land.  The  Jewr}'-  in 
which  he  lived  was  exempt  from  the  common  law.  He 
was  simply  the  King's  chattel,  and  his  life  and  goods  were 
at  the  King's  mercy.  But  he  was  too  valuable  a  posses- 
sion to  be  lightly  thrown  away.  If  the  Jewish  merchant 
had  no  standing-ground  in  the  local  court  the  king  enabled 
him  to  sue  before  a  special  justiciar;  his  bonds  were  de- 
posited for  safety  in  a  chamber  of  the  royal  palace  at  West- 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204^1291.  345 

minster ;  he  was  protected  against  the  popular  hatred  in 
the  free  exercise  of  his  religion  and  allowed  to  build  syna- 
gogues and  to  manage  his  own  ecclesiastical  affairs  by 
means  of  a  chief  rabbi.  The  royal  protection  was  dictated 
Dy  no-spirit  of  tolerance  or  mercy.  To  the  kings  the  Jew 
was  a  mere  engine  of  finance.  The  wealth  which  he  ac- 
cumulated was  wrung  from  him  whenever  the  crown  had 
need,  and  torture  and  imprisonment  were  resorted  to  when 
milder  means  failed.  It  was  the  gold  of  the  Jew  that  filled 
tne  royal  treasury  at  the  outbreak  of  war  or  of  revolt.  It 
was  in  the  Hebrew  coffers  that  the  foreign  kings  found 
strength  to  hold  their  baronage  at  bay. 

That  the  presence  of  the  Jew  was,  at  least  in  the  earlier 
years  of  his  settlement,  beneficial  to  the  nation  at  large 
there  can  be  little  doubt.  His  arrival  was  the  arrival  of 
a  capitalist;  and  heavy  as  was  the  usury  he  necessarily 
exacted  in  the  general  insecurity  of  the  time  his  loans  gave 
an  impulse  to  industry.  The  century  which  followed  the 
Conquest  witnessed  an  outburst  of  architectural  energy 
which  covered  the  land  with  castles  and  cathedrals ;  but 
castle  and  cathedral  alike  owed  their  erection  to  the  loans 
of  the  Jew.  His  own  example  gave  a  new  vigor  to  do- 
mestic architecture.  The  buildings  which,  as  at  Lincoln 
and  Bury  St.  Edmund's,  still  retain  their  name  of  "Jews' 
Houses"  were  almost  the  first  houses  of  stone  which  super- 
seded the  mere  hovels  of  the  English  burghers.  Nor  was 
their  influence  simply  industrial.  Through  their  connec- 
tion with  the  Jewish  schools  in  Spain  and  the  East  they 
opened  a  way  for  the  revival  of  physical  sciences.  A  Jew- 
ish medical  school  seems  to  have  existed  at  Oxford ;  Koger 
Bacon  himself  studied  under  English  rabbis.  But  the 
general  progress  of  civilization  now  drew  little  help  from 
the  Jew,  while  the  coming  of  the  Cahorsine  and  Italian 
bankers  drove  him  from  the  field  of  commercial  finance. 
He  fell  back  on  the  petty  usury  of  loans  to  the  poor,  a  trade 
necessarily  accompanied  with  much  of  extortion  and  which 
roused  into  fiercer  life  the  religious  hatred  against  their 


346  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

race.  Wild  stories  floated  about  of  children  carried  off  to 
be  circumcised  or  crucified,  and  a  Lincoln  boy  who  was 
found  slain  in  a  Jewish  house  was  canonized  by  popular 
reverence  as  "St,  Hugh."  The  first  work  of  the  Friars 
was  to  settle  in  the  Jewish  quarters  and  attempt  their  con- 
version, but  the  popular  fury  rose  too  fast  for  these  gentler 
means  of  reconciliation.  When  the  Franciscans  saved  sev- 
enty Jews  from  hanging  by  their  prayer  to  Henry  the 
Third  the  populace  angrily  refused  the  brethren  alms. 

But  all  this  growing  hate  was  met  with  a  bold  defiance. 
The  picture  which  is  commonly  drawn  of  the  Jew  as  timid, 
silent,  crouching  under  oppression,  however  truly  it  may 
represent  the  general  position  of  his  race  throughout  mediae- 
val Europe,  is  far  from  being  borne  out  by  historical  fact 
on  this  side  the  Channel.  In  England  the  attitude  of  the 
Jew,  almost  to  the  very  end,  was  an  attitude  of  proud  and 
even  insolent  defiance.  He  knew  that  the  royal  policy  ex- 
empted him  from  the  common  taxation,  the  common  jus- 
tice, the  common  obligations  of  Englishmen.  Usurer, 
extortioner  as  the  realm  held  him  to  be,  the  royal  justice 
would  secure  him  the  repayment  of  his  bonds.  A  royal 
commission  visited  with  heavy  penalties  any  outbreak  of 
violence  against  the  King's  "chattels."  The  Red  King 
actually  forbade  the  conversion  of  a  Jew  to  the  Christian 
faith ;  it  was  a  poor  exchange,  he  said,  that  would  rid  him 
of  a  valuable  property  and  give  him  only  a  subject.  We 
see  in  such  a  case  as  that  of  Oxford  the  insolence  that  grew 
out  of  this  consciousness  of  the  royal  protection.  Here  as 
elsewhere  the  Jewry  was  a  town  within  a  town,  with  its 
own  language,  its  own  religion  and  law,  its  peculiar  com- 
merce, its  peculiar  dress.  No  city  bailiff  could  penetrate 
into  the  square  of  little  alleys  which  lay  behind  the  present 
Town  Hall ;  the  Church  itself  was  powerless  to  prevent  a 
synagogue  from  rising  in  haughty  rivalry  over  against  the 
cloister  of  St.  Frideswide.  Prior  Philip  of  St.  Frideswide 
complains  bitterly  of  a  certain  Hebrew  who  stood  at  his 
door  as  the  procession  of  the  saint  passed  by,  mocking  at 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTEH.    1204-1291.  347 

the  miracles  which  were  said  to  be  wrought  at  her  shrine. 
Halting  and  then  walking  firmly  on  his  feet,  showing  his 
hands  clenched  as  if  with  palsy  and  then  flinging  open  his 
fingers,  the  Jew  claimed  gifts  and  oblations  from  the  crowd 
that  flocked  to  St.  Frideswide's  shrine  on  the  ground  that 
such  recoveries  of  life  and  limb  were  quite  as  real  as  any 
that  Frideswide  ever  wrought.  Sickness  and  death  in  the 
prior's  story  avenge  the  saint  on  her  blasphemer,  but  no 
earthly  power,  ecclesiastical  or  civil,  seems  to  have  ven- 
tured to  deal  with  him.  A  more  daring  act  of  fanaticism 
showed  the  temper  of  the  Jews  even  at  the  close  of  Henry 
the  Third's  reign.  As  the  usual  procession  of  scholars 
and  citizens  returned  from  St.  Frideswide's,  on  the  As- 
cension Day  of  12G8,  a  Jew  suddenly  burst  from  a  group  of 
his  comrades  in  front  of  the  synagogue,  and  wrenching 
the  crucifix  from  its  bearer  trod  it  under  foot.  But  even 
in  presence  of  such  an  outrage  as  this  the  terror  of  the 
Crown  sheltered  the  Oxford  Jews  from  any  burst  of  popu- 
lar vengeance.  The  sentence  of  the  King  condemned  them 
to  set  up  a  cross  of  marble  on  the  spot  where  the  crime 
was  committed,  but  even  this  sentence  was  in  part  remitted, 
and  a  less  offensive  place  was  found  for  the  cross  in  an 
open  plot  by  Merton  College. 

Up  to  Edward's  day  indeed  the  royal  protection  had 
never  wavered.  Henry  the  Second  granted  the  Jews  a 
right  of  burial  outside  every  city  where  they  dwelt.  Rich- 
ard punished  heavil}^  a  massacre  of  the  Jews  at  York,  and 
organized  a  mixed  court  of  Jews  and  Christians  for  the 
registration  of  their  contracts.  John  suffered  none  to 
plunder  them  save  himself,  though  he  once  wrested  from 
them  a  sum  equal  to  a  year's  revenue  of  his  realm.  The 
troubles  of  the  next  reign  brought  in  a  harvest  greater 
than  even  the  royal  greed  could  reap;  the  Jews  grew 
wealthy  enough  to  acquire  estates ;  and  only  a  burst  of 
popular  feeling  prevented  a  legal  decision  which  would 
have  enabled  them  to  own  freeholds.  But  the  sack  of 
Jewry  after  Jewry  showed  the  popular  hatred  during  the 


348  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

Barons'  war,  and  at  its  close  fell  on  the  Jews  the  more 
terrible  persecution  of  the  law.  To  the  cry  against  usury 
and  the  religious  fanaticism  which  threatened  them  was 
now  added  the  jealousy  with  which  the  nation  that  had 
grown  up  round  the  Charter  regarded  all  exceptional  juris- 
dictions or  exemptions  from  the  common  law  and  the  com- 
mon burdens  of  the  realm.  As  Edward  looked  on  the 
privileges  of  the  Church  or  the  baronage,  so  his  people 
looked  on  the  privileges  of  the  Jews.  The  growing  weight 
of  the  Parliament  told  against  them.  Statute  after  statute 
hemmed  them  in.  They  were  forbidden  to  hold  real  prop- 
erty, to  employ  Christian  servants,  to  move  through  the 
streets  without  the  two  white  tablets  of  wool  on  their 
breasts  which  distinguished  their  race.  They  were  pro- 
hibited from  building  new  synagogues  or  eating  with 
Christians  or  acting  as  physicians  to  them.  Their  trade, 
already  crippled  by  the  rivalry  of  the  bankers  of  Cahors, 
was  annihilated  by  a  royal  order  which  bade  them  renounce 
usury  under  pain  of  death.  At  last  persecution  could  do 
no  more,  and  Edward,  eager  at  the  moment  to  find  sup- 
plies for  his  treasury-  and  himself  swayed  by  the  fanaticism 
of  his  subjects,  bought  the  grant  of  a  fifteenth  from  clergy 
and  laity  by  consenting  to  drive  the  Jews  from  his  realm. 
No  share  of  the  enormities  which  accompanied  this  expul- 
sion can  fall  upon  the  King,  for  he  not  only  suffered  the 
fugitives  to  take  their  personal  wealth  with  them,  but  pun- 
ished with  the  halter  those  who  plundered  them  at  sea. 
But  the  expulsion  was  none  the  less  cruel.  Of  the  sixteen 
thousand  who  preferred  exile  to  apostasy  few  reached  the 
shores  of  France.  Many  were  wrecked,  others  robbed  and 
flung  overboard.  One  ship-master  turned  out  a  crew  of 
wealthy  merchants  on  to  a  sandbank  and  bade  them  call  a 
new  Moses  to  save  them  from  the  sea. 

From  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews,  as  from  his  nobler 
schemes  of  legal  and  administrative  reforms,  Edward  was 
suddenly  called  away  to  face  complex  questions  which 
awaited  him  in  the  North.     At  the  moment  which  we 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.    1204—1291.  349 

have  reached  the  kingdom  of  the  Scots  was  still  an  aggre- 
gate of  four  distinct  countries,  each  with  its  different 
people,  its  different  tongue,  its  different  history.  The  old 
Pictish  kingdom  across  the  Firth  of  Forth,  the  original 
Scot  kingdom  in  Argyle,  the  district  of  Cumbria  or  Strath- 
clyde,  and  the  Lowlands  which  stretched  from  the  Firth 
of  Forth  to  the  English  border,  had  become  united  under 
the  Kings  of  the  Scots ;  Pictland  by  inheritance,  Cumbria 
by  a  grant  from  the  English  King  Eadmund,  the  Low- 
lands by  conquest,  confirmed  as  English  tradition  alleged 
by  a  grant  from  Cnut.  The  shadowy  claim  of  dependence 
on  the  English  Crown  which  dated  from  the  days  when  a 
Scotch  King  "  commended"  himself  and  his  people  to  Al- 
fred's son  Eadward,  a  claim  strengthened  by  the  grant  of 
Cumbria  to  Malcolm  as  a  "  fellow  worker"  of  the  English 
sovereign  "by  sea  and  land,"  may  have  been  made  more 
real  through  this  last  convention.  But  whatever  change 
the  acquisition  of  the  Lowlands  made  in  the  relation  of  the 
Scot  Kings  to  the  English  sovereigns,  it  certainly  affected 
in  a  very  marked  way  their  relation  both  to  England  and 
to  their  own  realm.  Its  first  result  was  the  fixing  of  the 
royal  residence  in  their  new  southern  dominion  at  Edin- 
burgh ;  and  the  English  civilization  which  surrounded  them 
from  the  moment  of  this  settlement  on  what  was  purely 
English  ground  changed  the  Scot  Kings  in  all  but  blood 
into  Englishmen.  The  marriage  of  King  Malcolm  with 
Margaret,  the  sister  of  Eadgar  -^theling,  not  only  has- 
tened this  change  but  opened  a  way  to  the  English  crown. 
Their  children  were  regarded  by  a  large  party  within  Eng- 
land as  representatives  of  the  older  royal  race  and  as  claim- 
ants of  the  throne,  and  this  danger  grew  as  William's 
devastation  of  the  North  not  only  drove  fresh  multitudes 
of  Englishmen  to  settle  in  the  Lowlands  but  filled  the 
Scotch  court  with  English  nobles  who  fled  thither  for  ref- 
uge. So  formidable  indeed  became  the  pretensions  of  the 
Scot  Kings  that  they  forced  the  ablest  of  our  Norman  sov- 
ereigns into  a  complete  change  of  policy.     The  Conqueror 


350  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III 

and  William  the  Red  had  met  the  threats  of  the  Scot  sov- 
ereigns by  invasions  which  ended  again  and  again  in  an 
illusory  homage,  but  the  marriage  of  Henry  the  First  with 
the  Scottish  Matilda  robbed  the  claims  of  the  Scottish  line 
of  much  of  their  force,  while  it  enabled  him  to  draw  their 
kinii'S  into  far  closer  relations  with  the  Norman  throne. 
King  David  not  only  abandoned  the  ambitious  dreams  of 
his  predecessors  to  place  himself  at  the  head  of  his  niece 
Matilda's  party  in  her  contest  with  Stephen,  but  as  Henry's 
brother-in-law  he  figured  as  the  first  noble  of  the  English 
Court  and  found  English  models  and  English  support  in 
the  work  of  organization  which  he  attempted  within  his 
own  dominions.  As  the  marriage  with  Margaret  had 
changed  Malcolm  from  a  Celtic  chieftain  into  an  English 
King,  so  that  of  Matilda  brought  abovit  the  conversion  of 
David  into  a  Norman  and  feudal  sovereign.  His  court 
was  filled  with  Norman  nobles  from  the  South,  such  as  the 
Balliols  and  Bruces  who  were  destined  to  play  so  great  a 
part  afterward  but  who  now  for  the  first  time  obtained 
fiefs  in  the  Scottish  realm,  and  a  feudal  jurisprudence  mod- 
elled on  that  of  England  was  introduced  into  the  Lowlands. 
A  fresh  connection  between  Scotland  and  the  English 
sovereigns  began  with  the  grant  of  lordships  within  Eng- 
land itself  to  the  Scot  kings  or  their  sons.  The  Earldom 
of  Northumberland  was  held  by  David's  son  Henry,  that 
of  Huntingdon  by  Henry  the  Lion.  Homage  was  some- 
times rendered,  whether  for  these  lordships,  for  the  Low- 
lands, or  for  the  whole  Scottish  realm,  but  it  was  the  cap- 
ture of  William  the  Lion  during  the  revolt  of  the  English 
baronage  which  first  suggested  to  the  ambition  of  Henry 
the  Second  the  project  of  a  closer  dependence  of  Scotland 
on  the  English  Crown.  To  gain  his  freedom  William 
consented  to  hold  his  kingdom  of  Henry  and  his  heirs. 
The  prelates  and  lords  of  Scotland  did  homage  to  Henry 
as  to  their  direct  lord,  and  a  right  of  appeal  in  all  Scotch 
causes  was  allowed  to  the  superior  court  of  the  English 
■uzerain.     From  this  bondage  however  Scotland  was  freed 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  351 

by  the  prodigality  of  Ricliard  who  allowed  her  to  buy  back 
the  freedom  she  had  forfeited.  Both  sides  fell  into  their 
old  position,  but  both  were  ceasing  gradually  to  remember 
the  distinctions  between  the  various  relations  in  which  the 
Scot  King  stood  for  his  different  provinces  to  the  English 
Crown,  Scotland  had  come  to  be  thought  of  as  a  single 
country;  and  the  court  of  London  transferred  to  the  whole 
of  it  those  claims  of  direct  feudal  suzerainty  which  at  most 
applied  only  to  Strathclyde,  while  the  court  of  Edinburgh 
looked  on  the  English  Lowlands  as  holding  no  closer  rela- 
tion to  England  than  the  Pictish  lands  beyond  the  Forth. 
Any  difficulties  which  arose  were  evaded  by  a  legal  com- 
promise. The  Scot  Kings  repeatedly  did  homage  to  the 
English  sovereign,  but  with  a  reservation  of  rights  which 
were  prudently  left  unspecified.  The  English  King  ac- 
cepted the  homage  on  the  assumption  that  it  was  rendered 
to  him  as  overlord  of  the  Scottish  realm,  and  this  assump- 
tion was  neither  granted  nor  denied.  For  nearly  a  hun- 
dred years  the  relations  of  the  two  countries  were  thus  kept 
peaceful  and  friendly,  and  the  death  of  Alexander  the  Third 
seemed  destined  to  remove  even  the  necessity  of  protests 
by  a  closer  union  of  the  two  kingdoms.  Alexander  had 
wedded  his  only  daughter  to  the  King  of  Norway,  and 
after  long  negotiation  the  Scotch  Parliament  proposed  the 
marriage  of  Margaret,  "the  Maid  of  Norway,"  the  girl 
who  was  the  only  issue  of  this  marriage  and  so  heiress  of 
the  kingdom,  with  the  son  of  Edward  the  First.  It  was 
however  carefully  provided  in  the  marriage  treaty  which 
was  concluded  at  Brigham  in  1290  that  Scotland  should 
remain  a  separate  and  free  kingdom,  and  that  its  laws  and 
customs  should  be  preserved  inviolate.  No  military  aid 
was  to  be  claimed  by  the  English  King,  no  Scotch  appeal 
to  be  carried  to  an  English  court.  But  this  project  was 
abruptly  frustrated  by  the  child's  death  during  her  voyage 
to  Scotland  in  the  following  October,  and  with  the  rise  of 
claimant  after  claimant  of  the  vacant  throne  Edward  was 
drawn  into  far  other  relations  to  the  Scottish  realm. 


352  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  III. 

Of  the  thirteen  pretenders  to  the  throne  of  Scotland  only 
three  could  be  regarded  as  serious  claimants.  By  the  ex- 
tinction of  the  line  of  William  the  Lion  the  rights  of  suc- 
cession passed  to  the  daughters  of  his  brother  David.  The 
claim  of  John  Balliol,  Lord  of  Galloway,  rested  on  his  de- 
scent from  the  elder  of  these;  that  of  Robert  Bruce,  Lord 
of  Annandale,  on  his  descent  from  the  second  ;  that  of  John 
Hastings,  Lord  of  Abergavemiy,  on  his  descent  from  the 
third.  It  is  clear  that  at  this  crisis  every  one  in  Scotland 
or  out  of  it  recognized  some  sort  of  overlordship  in  Edward, 
for  the  Norwegian  King,  the  Primate  of  St.  Andrew's,  and 
seven  of  the  Scotch  Earls  had  already  appealed  to  him  be- 
fore Margaret's  death ;  and  her  death  was  followed  by  the 
consent  both  of  the  claimants  and  the  Council  of  Regency 
to  refer  the  question  of  the  succession  to  his  decision  in  a 
Parliament  at  Norham.  But  the  overlordship  which  the 
Scots  acknowledged  was  something  far  less  direct  and 
definite  than  the  superiority  which  Edward  claimed  at  the 
opening  of  this  conference  in  May,  1291.  His  claim  was 
supported  by  excerpts  from  monastic  chronicles  and  by  the 
slow  advance  of  an  English  army ;  while  the  Scotch  lords, 
taken  by  surprise,  found  little  help  in  the  delay  which  was 
granted  them.  At  the  opening  of  June  therefore  in  com- 
mon with  nine  of  the  claimants  they  formally  admitted 
Edward's  direct  suzerainty.  To  the  nobles  in  fact  the 
concession  must  have  seemed  a  small  one,  for  like  the  prin- 
cipal claimants  they  were  for  the  most  part  Norman  in 
blood,  with  estates  in  both  countries,  and  looking  for  hon- 
ors and  pensions  from  the  English  Court.  From  the  Com- 
mons who  were  gathered  with  the  nobles  at  Norham  no 
such  admission  of  Edward's  claims  could  be  extorted;  but 
in  Scotland,  feudalized  as  it  had  been  by  David,  the  Com- 
mons were  aa  yet  of  little  weight  and  their  opposition  was 
quietly  passed  by.  All  the  rights  of  a  feudal  suzerain 
were  at  once  assumed  by  the  English  King;  he  entered 
into  the  possession  of  the  country  as  into  that  of  a  disputed 
fief  to  be  held  by  its  overlord  till  the  dispute  was  settled. 


EDWARD    I. 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  353 


his  peace  was  sworn  throughout  the  land,  its  castles  deliv- 
ered into  his  charge,  while  its  bishops  and  nobles  swore 
homage  to  him  directly  as  their  lord  superior.  Scotland 
was  thus  reduced  to  the  subjection  which  she  had  experi- 
enced under  Henry  the  Second;  but  the  full  discussion 
which  followed  over  the  various  claims  to  the  throne 
showed  that  while  exacting  to  the  full  what  he  believed  to 
be  his  right  Edward  desired  to  do  justice  to  the  country 
itself.  The  body  of  commissioners  which  the  King  named 
to  report  on  the  claims  to  the  throne  were  mainly  Scotch. 
A  proposal  for  the  partition  of  the  realm  among  the  claim- 
ants was  rejected  as  contrary  to  Scotch  law.  On  the  re- 
port of  the  commissioners  after  a  twelvemonth's  investiga- 
tion in  favor  of  Balliol  as  representative  of  the  elder  branch 
at  the  close  of  the  year  1292,  his  homage  was  accepted  for 
the  whole  kingdom  of  Scotland  with  a  full  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  services  due  from  him  to  its  overlord.  The 
castles  were  at  once  delivered  to  the  new  monarch,  and  for 
a  time  there  was  peace. 

With  the  accession  of  Balliol  and  the  rendering  of  his 
homage  for  the  Scottish  realm  the  greatness  of  Edward 
reached  its  height.  He  was  lord  of  Britain  as  no  English 
King  had  been  before.  The  last  traces  of  Welsh  independ- 
ence were  trodden  under  foot.  The  shadowy  claims  of 
supremacy  over  Scotland  were  changed  into  a  direct  over- 
lordship.  Across  the  one  sea  Edward  was  lord  of  Guienne, 
across  the  other  of  Ireland,  and  in  England  itself  a  wise 
and  generous  policy  had  knit  the  whole  nation  round  his 
throne.  Firmly  as  he  still  clung  to  prerogatives  which 
the  baronage  were  as  firm  not  to  own,  the  main  struggle 
for  the  Charter  was  over.  Justice  and  good  government 
were  secured.  The  personal  despotism  which  John  had 
striven  to  build  up,  the  imperial  autocracy  which  had 
haunted  the  imagination  of  Henry  the  Third,  were  alike 
set  aside.  The  rule  of  Edward,  vigorous  and  effective  as 
it  was,  was  a  rule  of  law,  and  of  law  enacted  not  by  the 
royal  will,  but  by  the  common  council  of  the  realm. 
Vol.  I.— 23 


354  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

Never  had  English  ruler  reached  a  greater  height  of  power, 
nor  was  there  any  sign  to  warn  the  King  of  the  troubles 
which  awaited  him.  France,  jealous  as  it  was  of  his 
greatness  and  covetous  of  his  Gascon  possessions,  he  could 
hold  at  bay.  Wales  was  growing  tranquil.  Scotland 
gave  few  signs  of  discontent  or  restlessness  in  the  first  year 
that  followed  the  homage  of  its  King.  Under  John  Bal- 
liol  it  had  simply  fallen  back  into  the  position  of  depend- 
ence which  it  held  under  William  the  Lion,  and  Edward 
had  no  purpose  of  pushing  further  his  rights  as  suzerain 
than  Henry  the  Second  had  done.  One  claim  of  the  Eng- 
lish Crown  indeed  was  soon  a  subject  of  dispute  between 
the  lawyers  of  the  Scotch  and  of  the  English  Council 
boards.  Edward  would  have  granted  as  freely  as  Balliol 
himself  that  though  Scotland  was  a  dependent  kingdom  it 
was  far  from  being  an  ordinary  fief  of  the  English  Crown. 
By  feudal  custom  a  distinction  had  always  been  held  to 
exist  between  the  relations  of  a  dependent  king  to  a  supe- 
rior lord  and  those  of  a  vassal  noble  to  his  sovereign.  At 
Balliol's  homage  indeed  Edward  had  disclaimed  any  right 
to  the  ordinary  feudal  incidents  of  a  fief,  those  of  wardship 
or  marriage,  and  in  this  disclaimer  he  was  only  repeating 
the  reservations  of  the  marriage  treaty  of  Brigham.  There 
were  other  customs  of  the  Scotch  realm  as  incontestable  as 
these.  Even  after  the  treaty  of  Falaise  the  Scotch  King 
had  not  been  held  bound  to  attend  the  council  of  the  Eng- 
lish baronage,  to  do  service  in  English  warfare,  or  to  con- 
tribute on  the  *)art  of  his  Scotch  realm  to  English  aids.  If 
no  expresfci  acknowledgment  of  these  rights  had  been  made 
by  Edward,  for  some  time  after  his  acceptance  of  Balliol's 
homage  they  were  practically  observed.  The  claim  of  in- 
dependent justice  was  more  doubtful,  as  it  was  of  higher 
import  than  these.  The  judicial  independence  of  Scotland 
had  been  expressly  reserved  in  the  marriage  treaty.  It 
wap  "jertain  that  no  appeal  from  a  Scotch  King's  court  to 
that  of  his  overlord  had  been  allowed  since  the  days  of 
WyUam  the  Lion.     But  in  the  jurisprudence  of  the  feudal 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  355 

lawyers  the  right  of  ultimate  appeal  was  the  test  of  sover- 
eignty, and  Edward  regarded  Balliol's  homage  as  having 
placed  him  precisely  in  the  position  of  William  the  Lion 
and  subjected  his  decisions  to  those  of  his  overlord.  He 
was  resolute  therefore  to  assert  the  supremacy  of  his  court 
and  to  receive  Scotch  appeals. 

Even  here  however  the  quarrel  seemed  likely  to  end  only 
in  legal  bickering.  Balliol  at  first  gave  way,  and  it  was 
not  tiU  1293  that  he  alleged  himself  forced  by  the  resent- 
ment both  of  his  Baronage  and  his  people  to  take  up  an 
attitude  of  resistance.  While  appearing  therefore  formally 
at  Westminster  he  refused  to  answer  an  appeal  before  the 
English  courts  save  by  advice  of  his  Council.  But  real  as 
the  resentment  of  his  barons  may  have  been,  it  was  not 
Scotland  which  really  spurred  Balliol  to  this  defiance. 
His  wounded  pride  had  made  him  the  tool  of  a  power  be- 
yond the  sea.  The  keenness  with  which  France  had 
watched  every  step  of  Edward's  success  in  the  north  sprang 
not  merely  from  a  natural  jealousy  of  his  greatness  but 
from  its  bearing  on  a  great  object  of  French  ambition. 
One  fragment  of  Eleanor's  inheritance  still  remained  to 
her  descendants,  Guienne  and  Gascony,  the  fair  lands 
along  the  Garonne  and  the  territory  which  stretched  south 
of  that  river  to  the  Pyrenees.  It  was  this  territory  that 
now  tempted  the  greed  of  Philip  the  Fair,  and  it  was  in 
feeding  the  strife  between  England  and  the  Scotch  King 
that  Philip  saw  an  opening  for  winning  it.  French  envoys 
therefore  brought  promises  of  aid  to  the  Scotch  Court;  and 
no  sooner  had  these  intrigues  moved  Balliol  to  resent  the 
claims  of  his  overlord  than  Philip  found  a  pretext  for  open 
quarrel  with  Edward  in  the  frays  which  went  constantly 
on  in  the  Cliannel  between  the  mariners  of  Normandj"  and 
those  of  the  Cinque  Ports.  They  culminated  at  this  mo- 
ment in  a  great  sea-fight  which  proved  fatal  to  eight  thou- 
sand Frenchmen,  and  for  this  Philip  haughtily  demanded 
redress.  Edward  saw  at  once  the  danger  of  his  position. 
He  did  his  best  to  allay  the  storm  by  promise  of  satisfac- 


356  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 


tion  to  France,  and  by  addressing  threats  of  punishment 
to  the  English  seamen .  But  Philip  still  clung  to  his  wrong, 
while  the  national  passion  which  was  to  prove  for  a  hun- 
dred years  to  come  strong  enough  to  hold  down  the  royal 
policy  of  peace  showed  itself  in  a  characteristic  defiance 
with  which  the  seamen  of  the  Cinque  Ports  met  Edward's 
menaces.  "  Be  the  King's  Council  well  advised,"  ran  this 
remonstrance,  "  that  if  wrong  or  grievance  be  done  them 
in  any  fashion  against  right,  they  will  sooner  forsake 
wives,  children,  and  all  that  they  have,  and  go  seek  through 
the  seas  where  they  shall  think  to  make  their  profit. "  In 
spite  therefore  of  Edward's  efforts  the  contest  continued, 
and  Philip  found  in  it  an  opportunity  to  cite  the  King  be- 
fore his  court  at  Paris  for  wrongs  done  to  him  as  suzerain. 
It  was  hard  for  Edward  to  dispute  the  summons  without 
weakening  the  position  which  his  own  sovereign  courts 
had  taken  up  toward  the  Scotch  King,  and  in  a  final  effort 
to  avert  the  conflict  the  King  submitted  to  a  legal  decision 
of  the  question,  and  to  a  formal  cession  of  Guienne  into 
Philip's  hands  for  forty  days  in  acknowledgment  of  his 
supremacy.  Bitter  as  the  sacrifice  must  have  been  it  failed 
to  win  peace.  The  forty  days  had  no  sooner  passed  than 
Philip  refused  to  restore  the  fortresses  which  had  been  left 
in  pledge.  In  February,  1294,  he  declared  the  English  king 
contumacious,  and  in  May  declared  his  fiefs  forfeited  to 
the  French  Crown.  Edward  was  driven  to  take  up  arms, 
but  a  revolt  in  Wales  deferred  the  expedition  to  the  follow- 
ing year.  No  sooner  however  was  it  again  taken  in  hand 
than  it  became  clear  that  a  double  danger  had  to  be  met. 
The  summons  which  Edward  addressed  to  the  Scotch  bar- 
ons to  foUow  him  in  arms  to  Guienne  was  disregarded. 
It  was  in  truth,  as  we  have  seen,  a  breach  of  customary 
law,  and  was  probably  meant  to  force  Scotland  into  an 
open  declaration  of  its  connection  with  France.  A  second 
summons  was  followed  by  a  more  formal  refusal.  The 
greatness  of  the  danger  threw  Edward  on  England  itself. 
For  a  war  in  Guienne  and  the  north  he  needed  supplies : 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  357 


but  he  needed  yet  more  the  firm  support  of  his  people  in  a 
struggle  which,  little  as  he  foresaw  its  ultimate  results, 
would  plainly  be  one  of  great  difficulty  and  danger.  In 
1295  he  called  a  Parliament  to  counsel  with  him  on  the 
affairs  of  the  realm,  but  with  the  large  statesmanship 
which  distinguished  him  he  took  this  occasion  of  giving 
the  Parliament  a  shape  and  organization  which  has  left  its 
assembly  the  most  important  event  in  English  history. 

To  realize  its  importance  we  must  briefly  review  the 
changes  by  which  the  Great  Council  of  the  Norman  Kings 
had  been  gradually  transforming  itself  into  what  was 
henceforth  to  be  known  as  the  English  Parliament.  Nei- 
ther the  Meeting  of  the  Wise  Men  before  the  Conquest  nor 
the  Great  Council  of  the  Barons  after  it  had  been  in  any 
legal  or  formal  way  representative  bodies.  The  first  theo- 
retically included  all  free  holders  of  land,  but  it  shrank  at 
an  early  time  into  a  gathering  of  earls,  higher  nobles,  and 
bishops  with  the  officers  and  thegns  of  the  royal  house- 
hold. Little  change  was  made  in  the  composition  of  this 
assembly  by  the  Conquest,  for  the  Great  Council  of  the 
Norman  kings  was  supposed  to  include  all  tenants  who 
held  directly  of  the  Crown,  the  bishops  and  greater  abbots 
(whose  character  as  independent  spiritual  members  tended 
more  and  more  to  merge  in  their  position  as  barons) ,  and 
the  high  officers  of  the  Court.  But  though  its  composition 
remained  the  same,  the  character  of  the  assembly  was  es- 
sentially altered;  from  a  free  gathering  of  "Wise  Men"  it 
sank  to  a  Royal  Court  of  feudal  vassals.  Its  functions  too 
seem  to  have  become  almost  nominal  and  its  powers  to 
have  been  restricted  to  the  sanctioning,  without  debate  or 
possibility  of  refusal,  all  grants  demanded  from  it  by  the 
Crown.  But  nominal  as  such  a  sanction  might  be,  the 
"  counsel  and  consent"  of  the  Great  Council  was  necessary 
for  the  legal  validity  of  every  considerable  fiscal  or  politi- 
cal measure.  Its  existence  therefore  remained  an  effectual 
protest  against  the  imperial  theories  advanced  by  the  law- 
yers of  Henry  the  Second  which  declared  aU  legislative 


358  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


power  to  reside  wholly  in  the  sovereign.  It  was  in  fact 
under  Henry  that  these  assemblies  became  more  regular, 
and  their  functions  more  important.  The  reforms  which 
marked  his  reign  were  issued  in  the  Great  Council,  and 
even  financial  matters  were  suffered  to  be  debated  there. 
But  it  was  not  till  the  grant  of  the  Great  Charter  that  the 
powers  of  this  assembly  over  taxation  were  formaUy  rec- 
ognized, and  the  principle  established  that  no  burden  be- 
yond the  customary  feudal  aids  might  be  imposed  "save 
by  the  Common  Council  of  the  Realm." 

The  same  document  first  expressly  regulated  its  form.  In 
theory,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Great  Council  consisted  of 
aU  who  held  laud  directly  of  the  Crown.  But  the  same 
causes  which  restricted  attendance  at  the  Witenagemote 
to  the  greater  nobles  told  on  the  actual  composition  of  the 
Council  of  Barons.  While  the  attendance  of  the  ordinary 
tenants  in  chief,  the  Knights  or  "  Lesser  Barons"  as  they 
were  called,  was  burdensome  from  its  expense  to  them- 
selves, their  numbers  and  their  dependence  on  the  higher 
nobles  made  the  assembly  of  these  knights  dangerous  to 
the  Crown.  As  early  therefore  as  the  time  of  Henry  the 
First  we  find  a  distinction  recognized  between  the  "  Greater 
Barons,"  of  whom  the  Council  was  usually  composed,  and 
the  "Lesser  Barons,"  who  formed  the  bulk  of  the  tenants 
of  the  Crown.  But  though  the  attendance  of  the  latter 
had  become  rare  their  right  of  attendance  remained  intact. 
While  enacting  that  the  prelates  and  greater  barons  should 
be  summoned  by  special  writs  to  each  gathering  of  the 
Council  a  remarkable  provision  of  the  Great  Charter  orders 
a  general  summons  to  be  issued  through  the  Sheriff  to  all 
direct  tenants  of  the  Crown.  The  provision  was  probably 
intended  to  rouse  the  lesser  Baronage  to  the  exercise  of 
rights  which  had  practically  passed  into  desuetude,  but  as 
the  clause  is  omitted  in  later  issues  of  the  Charter  we  may 
doubt  whether  the  principle  it  embodied  ever  received  more 
than  a  very  limited  application.  There  are  traces  of  the 
attendance  of  a  few  of  the  lesser  knighthood,  gentry  per- 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHAETER.    1204—1291.  359 

haps  of  the  neighborhood  where  the  assembly  was  held,  in 
some  of  its  meetings  under  Henry  the  Third,  but  till  a  late 
period  in  the  reign  of  his  successor  the  Great  Council  prac- 
tically remained  a  gathering  of  the  greater  barons,  the  prel- 
ates, ^nd  the  high  officers  of  the  Crown. 

The  change  which  the  Great  Charter  had  failed  to  ac- 
complish was  now  however  brought  about  by  the  social 
circumstances  of  the  time.  One  of  the  most  remarkable 
of  these  was  a  steady  decrease  in  the  number  of  the  greater 
nobles.  The  bulk  of  the  earldoms  had  already  lapsed  to 
the  Crown  through  the  extinction  of  the  families  of  their 
possessors;  of  the  greater  baronies,  many  had  practically 
ceased  to  exist  by  their  division  among  female  co-heiresses, 
many  through  the  constant  struggle  of  the  poorer  nobles 
to  rid  themselves  of  their  rank  by  a  disclaimer  so  as  to  es- 
cape the  burden  of  higher  taxation  and  attendance  in  Par- 
liament which  it  involved.  How  far  this  diminution  had 
gone  we  may  see  from  the  fact  that  hardly  more  than  a 
hundred  barons  sat  in  the  earlier  Councils  of  Edward's 
reign.  But  while  the  number  of  those  who  actually  exer- 
cised the  privilege  of  assisting  in  Parliament  was  rapidly 
diminishing,  the  numbers  and  wealth  of  the  "lesser  baron- 
age, "  whose  right  of  attendance  had  become  a  mere  con- 
stitutional tradition,  was  as  rapidly  increasing.  The  long 
peace  and  prosperity  of  the  realm,  the  extension  of  its  com- 
merce and  the  increased  export  of  wool,  were  swelling  the 
ranks  and  incomes  of  the  country  gentry  as  well  as  of  the 
freeholders  and  substantial  yeomanry.  We  have  already 
noticed  the  effects  of  the  increase  of  wealth  in  begetting  a 
passion  for  the  possession  of  land  which  makes  this  reign 
so  critical  a  period  in  the  history  of  the  English  freeholder ; 
but  the  same  tendency  had  to  some  extent  existed  in  the 
preceding  century,  and  it  was  a  consciousness  of  the  grow- 
ing importance  of  this  class  of  rural  proprietors  which  in- 
duced the  barons  at  the  moment  of  the  Great  Charter  to 
make  their  fruitless  attempt  to  induce  them  to  take  part  in 
the  deliberations  of  the  Great  Council.     But  while  the 


3G0  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IU. 


barons  desired  their  presence  as  an  aid  against  the  Crown, 
the  Crown  itself  desired  it  as  a  means  of  rendering  taxa- 
tion more  eflficient.  So  long  as  the  Great  Council  remained 
a  mere  assembly  of  magnates  it  was  necessary  for  the 
King's  ministers  to  treat  separately  with  the  other  orders 
of  the  state  as  to  the  amount  and  assessment  of  their  con- 
tributions. The  grant  made  in  the  Great  Council  was 
binding  only  on  the  barons  and  prelates  who  made  it;  but 
before  the  aids  of  the  boroughs,  the  Church,  or  the  shires 
could  reach  the  royal  treasury,  a  separate  negotiation  had 
to  be  conducted  by  the  officers  of  the  Exchequer  with  the 
reeves  of  each  town,  the  sheriff  and  shire-court  of  each 
county,  and  the  archdeacons  of  each  diocese.  Bargains 
of  this  sort  would  be  the  more  tedious  and  disappointing 
as  the  necessities  of  the  Crown  increased  in  the  later  years 
of  Edward,  and  it  became  a  matter  of  fiscal  expediency  to 
obtain  the  sanction  of  any  proposed  taxation  through  the 
presence  of  these  classes  in  the  Great  Council  itself. 

The  effort  however  to  revive  the  old  personal  attendance 
of  the  lesser  baronage  which  had  broken  down  half  a  cen- 
tury before  could  hardly  be  renewed  at  a  time  when  the 
increase  of  their  numbers  made  it  more  impracticable  than 
ever ;  but  a  means  of  escape  from  this  difficulty  was  for- 
tunately suggested  by  the  very  nature  of  the  court  through 
which  alone  a  summons  could  be  addressed  to  the  landed 
knighthood.  Amid  the  many  judicial  reforms  of  Henry 
or  Edward  the  shire  court  remained  unchanged.  The 
haunted  mound  or  the  immemorial  oak  round  which  the 
assembly  gathered  (for  the  court  was  often  held  in  the  open 
air)  were  the  relics  of  a  time  before  the  free  kingdom  had 
sunk  into  a  shire  and  its  Meetings  of  the  Wise  into  a 
county  court.  But  save  that  the  King's  reeve  had  taken 
the  place  of  the  King  and  that  the  Norman  legislation  had 
displaced  the  Bishop  and  set  four  Coroners  by  the  Sheriff's 
side,  the  gathering  of  the  freeholders  remained  much  as  of 
old.  The  local  knighthood,  the  yeomanry,  the  husband- 
men of  the  county,  were  all  represented  in  the  crowd  that 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  361 

gathered  round  the  Sheriff,  as  guarded  by  his  liveried  fol- 
lowers he  published  the  King's  writs,  announced  his  de- 
mand of  aids,  received  the  presentment  of  criminals  and 
the  inquest  of  the  local  jurors,  assessed  the  taxation  of  each 
district,  or  listened  solemnly  to  appeals  for  justice,  civil 
and  criminal,  from  all  who  held  themselves  oppressed  in 
the  lesser  courts  of  the  hundred  or  the  soke.  It  was  in 
the  County  Court  alone  that  the  Sheriff  could  legally 
summon  the  lesser  baronage  to  attend  the  Great  Council, 
and  it  was  in  the  actual  constitution  of  this  assembly  that 
the  Crown  found  a  solution  of  the  difficult}^  which  we  have 
stated.  For  the  principle  of  representation  by  which  it 
was  finally  solved  was  coeval  with  the  Shire  Court  itself. 
In  all  cases  of  civil  or  criminal  justice  the  twelve  sworn  as- 
sessors of  the  Sheriff,  as  members  of  a  class,  though  not 
formally  deputed  for  that  purpose,  practically  represented 
the  judicial  opinion  of  the  county  at  large.  From  every 
hundred  came  groups  of  twelve  sworn  deputies,  the  "  ju- 
rors" through  whom  the  presentments  of  the  district  were 
made  to  the  royal  officer  and  with  whom  the  assessment  of 
its  share  in  the  general  taxation  was  arranged.  The  hus- 
bandmen on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd,  clad  in  the  brown 
smock  frock  which  still  lingers  in  the  garb  of  our  carters 
and  ploughmen,  were  broken  up  into  little  knots  of  five,  a 
reeve  and  four  assistants,  each  of  which  knots  formed  the 
representative  of  a  rural  township.  If  in  fact  we  regard 
the  Shire  Courts  as  lineally  the  descendants  of  our  earliest 
English  Witenagemotes,  we  may  justly  claim  the  princi- 
ple of  parliamentary  representation  as  among  the  oldest  of 
our  institutions. 

It  was  easy  to  give  this  principle  a  further  extension  by 
the  choice  of  representatives  of  the  lesser  barons  in  the 
shire  courts  to  which  they  were  summoned;  but  it  was 
only  slowly  and  tentatively  that  this  process  was  applied 
to  the  reconstitution  of  the  Great  Council.  As  early  as 
the  close  of  John's  reign  there  are  indications  of  the  ap- 
proaching   change    in    the   summons   of    "four   discreet 


3G3  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  HI 

knicfhts"  from  every  county.  Fresh  need  of  local  support 
was  felt  by  both  parties  in  the  conflict  of  the  succeeding 
reign,  and  Henry  and  his  barons  alike  summoned  knights 
from  each  shire  "  to  meet  on  the  common  business  of  the 
realm."  It  was  no  doubt  with  the  same  purpose  that  the 
writs  of  Earl  Simon  ordered  the  choice  of  knights  in  each 
shire  for  his  famous  Parliament  of  12G5.  Something  like 
a  continuous  attendance  may  be  dated  from  the  accession 
of  Edward,  but  it  was  long  before  the  knights  were  re- 
garded as  more  than  local  deputies  for  the  assessment  of 
taxation  or  admitted  to  a  share  in  the  general  business  of 
the  Great  Council.  The  statute  "Quia  Emptores,"  for 
instance,  was  passed  in  it  before  the  knights  who  had  been 
summoned  could  attend.  Their  participation  in  the  delib- 
erative power  of  Parliament,  as  well  as  their  regular  and 
continuous  attendance,  dates  only  from  the  Parliament  of 
1295.  But  a  far  greater  constitutional  change  in  their  po- 
sition had  already  taken  place  through  the  extension  of 
electoral  rights  to  the  freeholders  at  large.  The  one  class 
entitled  to  a  seat  in  the  Great  Council  was,  as  we  have 
seen,  that  of  the  lesser  baronage;  and  it  was  of  the  lesser 
baronage  alone  that  the  knights  were  in  theory  the  repre- 
sentatives. But  the  necessity  of  holding  their  election  in 
the  County  Court  rendered  any  restriction  of  the  electoral 
body  physically  impossible.  The  court  was  composed  of 
the  whole  body  of  freeholders,  and  no  sheriff  could  distin- 
guish the  "  aye,  aye"  of  the  yeoman  from  the  "  aye,  aye" 
of  the  lesser  baron.  From  the  first  moment  therefore  of 
their  attendance  we  find  the  knights  regarded  not  as  mere 
representatives  of  the  baronage  but  as  knights  of  the  shire, 
and  by  this  silent  revolution  the  whole  body  of  the  rural 
freeholders  were  admitted  to  a  share  in  the  government  of 
the  realm. 

The  financial  difficulties  of  the  Crown  led  to  a  far  more 
radical  revolution  in  the  admission  into  the  Great  Council 
of  representatives  from  the  boroughs.  The  presence  of 
knights  from  each  shire  was  the  recognition  of  an  older 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1304—1391.  363 

right,  but  no  right  of  attendance  or  share  in  the  national 
"  counsel  and  assent"  could  be  pleaded  for  the  burgesses  of 
the  towns.  On  the  other  hand  the  rapid  development  of 
their  wealth  made  them  every  day  more  important  as  ele- 
ment«  in  the  national  taxation.  From  all  payment  of  the 
dues  or  fines  exacted  by  the  King  as  the  original  lord  of 
the  soil  on  which  they  had  in  most  cases  grown  up  the 
towns  had  long  since  freed  themselves  by  what  was  called 
the  purchase  of  the  "  farm  of  the  borough ;"  in  other  words, 
by  the  commutation  of  these  uncertain  dues  for  a  fixed  sum 
paid  annually  to  the  Crown  and  apportioned  by  their  own 
magistrates  among  the  general  body  of  the  burghers.  All 
that  the  King  legall}^  retained  was  the  right  enjoyed  by 
every  great  proprietor  of  levying  a  corresponding  taxation 
on  his  tenants  in  demesne  under  the  name  of  "a  free  aid" 
whenever  a  grant  was  made  for  the  national  necessities  by 
the  barons  of  the  Great  Council.  But  the  temptation  of 
appropriating  the  growing  wealth  of  the  mercantile  class 
proved  stronger  than  legal  restrictions,  and  we  find  both 
Henry  the  Third  and  his  son  assuming  a  right  of  imposing 
t'ixes  at  pleasure  and  without  any  authority  from  the  Coun- 
cil even  over  London  itself.  The  burgesses  could  refuse 
indeed  the  invitation  to  contribute  to  the  "  free  aids"  de- 
manded by  the  royal  officers,  but  the  suspension  of  their 
markets  or  trading  privileges  brought  them  in  the  end  to 
submission.  Each  of  these  "  free  aids"  however  had  to  be 
extorted  after  a  long  wrangle  between  the  borough  and  the 
officers  of  the  Exchequer ;  and  if  the  towns  were  driven  to 
comply  with  what  they  considered  an  extortion  they  could 
generally  force  the  Crown  by  evasions  and  delays  to  a 
compromise  and  abatement  of  its  original  demands. 

The  same  financial  reasons  therefore  existed  for  desiring 
the  presence  of  borough  representatives  in  the  Great  Coun- 
cil as  existed  in  tlie  case  of  the  shires;  but  it  was  the  genius 
oi'  Earl  Simon  which  first  broke  through  the  older  consti- 
tutional tradition  and  summoned  two  burgesses  from  each 
town  to  the  ParJiamfiul  of  lii65.     Time  luid  indeed  to  pas» 


364  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

before  the  large  and  statesmanlike  conception  of  the  great 
patriot  could  meet  with  full  acceptance.  Through  the 
earlier  part  of  Edward's  reign  we  find  a  few  instances  of 
the  presence  of  representatives  from  the  towns,  but  their 
scant}^  numbers  and  the  irregularity  of  their  attendance 
show  that  they  were  summoned  rather  to  afford  financial 
information  to  the  Great  Council  than  as  representatives 
in  it  of  an  Estate  of  the  Realm.  But  every  year  pleaded 
stronger  and  stronger  for  their  inclusion,  and  in  the  Par- 
liament of  1295  that  of  1265  found  itself  at  last  reproduced. 
"It  was  from  me  that  he  learnt  it,"  Earl  Simon  had  cried, 
as  he  recognized  the  military  skill  of  Edward's  onset  at 
Evesham;  "it  was  from  me  that  he  learnt  it,"  his  spirit 
might  have  exclaimed  as  he  saw  the  King  gathering  at 
last  two  burgesses  "  from  every  city,  borough,  and  leading 
town"  within  his  realm  to  sit  side  by  side  with  the  knights, 
nobles,  and  barons  of  the  Great  Council.  To  the  Crown 
the  change  was  from  the  first  an  advantageous  one.  The 
grants  of  subsidies  by  the  burgesses  in  Parliament  proved 
more  profitable  than  the  previous  extortions  of  the  Ex- 
chequer. The  proportions  of  their  grant  generally  ex- 
ceeded that  of  the  other  estates.  Their  representatives  too 
proved  far  more  compliant  with  the  royal  will  than  the 
barons  or  knights  of  the  shire ;  only  on  one  occasion  dur- 
ing Edward's  reign  did  the  burgesses  waver  from  their 
general  support  of  the  Crown. 

It  was  easy  indeed  to  control  them,  for  the  selection  of 
boroughs  to  be  represented  remained  wholly  in  the  King's 
hands,  and  their  numbers  could  be  increased  or  diminished 
at  the  King's  pleasure.  The  determination  was  left  to  the 
sheriff,  and  at  a  hint  from  the  royal  Council  a  sheriff  of 
Wilts  would  cut  down  the  number  of  represented  boroughs 
in  his  shire  from  eleven  to  three,  or  a  sheriff  of  Bucks 
declare  he  could  find  but  a  single  borough,  that  of  i 
Wycomb,  within  the  bounds  of  his  county.  Nor  was  this 
exercise  of  the  prerogative  hampered  by  any  anxiety  on 
the  part  of  the  towns  to  claim  representative  privileges. 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  365 


It  was  hard  to  suspect  that  a  power  before  which  the 
Crown  would  have  to  bow  lay  in  the  ranks  of  soberly- 
clad  traders,  summoned  only  to  assess  the  contributions  of 
their  boroughs,  and  whose  attendance  was  as  difficult  to 
secure,  as  it  seemed  burdensome  to  themselves  and  the 
towns  who  sent  them.  The  mass  of  citizens  took  little  or 
no  part  in  their  choice,  for  they  were  elected  in  the  county 
court  by  a  few  of  the  principal  burghers  deputed  for  the 
purpose ;  but  the  cost  of  their  maintenance,  the  two  shil- 
lings a  day  paid  to  the  burgess  by  his  town  as  four  were 
paid  to  the  knight  by  his  county,  was  a  burden  from  which 
the  boroughs  made  desperate  efforts  to  escape.  Some  per- 
sisted in  making  no  return  to  the  sheriff.  Some  bought 
charters  of  exemption  from  the  troublesome  privilege.  Of 
the  165  who  were  summoned  by  Edward  the  First  more 
than  a  third  ceased  to  send  representatives  after  a  single 
compliance  with  the  royal  summons.  During  the  whole 
time  from  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  to  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  Sixth  the  sheriff  of  Lancashire  declined  to  re- 
turn the  names  of  any  boroughs  at  all  within  that  county 
"on  account  of  their  poverty."  Nor  were  the  representa- 
tives themselves  more  anxious  to  appear  than  their 
boroughs  to  send  them.  The  busy  country  squire  and  the 
thrifty  trader  were  equally  reluctant  to  undergo  the  trouble 
and  expense  of  a  journey  to  Westminster.  Legal  meas- 
ures were  often  necessary  to  ensure  their  presence.  Writs 
still  exist  in  abundance  such  as  that  by  which  Walter  le 
Rous  is  "  held  to  bail  in  eight  oxen  and  four  cart-horses  to 
come  before  the  King  on  the  day  specified"  for  attendance 
in  Parliament.  But  in  spite  of  obstacles  such  as  these  the 
presence  of  representatives  from  the  boroughs  may  be  re- 
garded as  continuous  from  the  Parliament  of  1295.  As 
the  representation  of  the  lesser  barons  had  widened 
through  a  silent  change  into  that  of  the  shire,  so  that  of 
the  boroughs — restricted  in  theory  to  those  in  the  royal 
demesne — seems  practically  from  Edward's  time  to  have 
been  extended  to  all  who  were  in  a  condition  to  pay  the 


3G0  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [BoOK  III 

cost  of  their  representatives'  support.  By  a  change  as 
silent  within  the  Parliament  itself  the  burgess,  originally 
summoned  to  take  part  only  in  matters  of  taxation,  was  at 
last  admitted  to  a  full  share  in  the  deliberations  and 
authority  of  the  other  orders  of  the  State, 

The  admission  of  the  burgesses  and  knights  of  the  shire 
to  the  assembly  of  1295  completed  the  fabric  of  our  repre- 
sentative constitution.  The  Great  Council  of  the  Barons 
became  the  Parliament  of  the  Realm.  Every  order  of  the 
state  found  itself  represented  in  this  assembly,  and  took 
part  in  the  grant  of  supplies,  the  work  of  legislation,  and 
in  the  end  the  control  of  government.  But  though  in  all 
essential  points  the  character  of  Parliament  has  remained 
the  same  from  that  time  to  this,  there  were  some  remark- 
able particulars  in  which  the  assembly  of  1295  differed 
widely  from  the  present  Parliament  at  St,  Stephen's. 
Some  of  these  differences,  such  as  those  which  sprang  from 
the  increased  powers  and  changed  relations  of  the  different 
orders  among  themselves,  we  shall  have  occasion  to  con- 
sider at  a  later  time.  But  a  difference  of  a  far  more  start- 
ling kind  than  these  lay  in  the  presence  of  the  clergy.  If 
there  is  any  part  in  the  parliamentary  scheme  of  Edward 
the  First  which  can  be  regarded  as  especially  his  own,  it 
is  his  project  for  the  representation  of  the  ecclesiastical 
order.  The  King  had  twice  at  least  summoned  its  "  proc- 
tors" to  Great  Councils  before  1295,  but  it  was  then  only 
that  the  complete  representation  of  the  Church  was  defi- 
nitety  organized  by  the  insertion  of  a  clause  in  the  writ 
which  summoned  a  bishop  to  Parliament  requiring  the 
personal  attendance  of  all  archdeacons,  deans,  or  priors  of 
cathedral  churches,  of  a  proctor  for  each  cathedral  chapter, 
and  two  for  the  clergy  within  his  diocese.  The  clause  is 
repeated  in  the  writs  of  the  present  day,  but  its  practical 
effect  was  foiled  almost  from  the  first  by  the  resolute  op- 
position of  those  to  whom  it  was  addressed.  "What  the 
towns  failed  in  doing  the  clergy  actually  did.  Even  when 
forced  to  comply  with  the  royal  summons,  as  they  seem  to 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204-1291.  3G7 


have  been  forced  during  Edward's  reign,  they  sat  jealously 
by  themselves,  and  their  refusal  to  vote  supplies  in  any 
but  their  own  provincial  assemblies,  or  convocations,  of 
Canterbury  and  York  left  the  Crown  without  a  motive  for 
insisting  on  their  continued  attendance.  Their  presence 
indeed,  though  still  at  times  granted  on  some  solemn  oc- 
casions, became  so  pure  a  formality  that  by  the  end  of 
the  fifteenth  century  it  had  sunk  wholl}^  into  desuetude. 
In  their  anxiety  to  preserve  their  existence  as  an  isolated 
and  privileged  order  the  clergy  flung  away  a  power  which, 
had  they  retained  it,  would  have  ruinously  hampered  the 
healthy  development  of  the  state.  To  take  a  single  in- 
stance, it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  great  changes  of  the 
Reformation  could  have  been  brought  about  had  a  good 
half  of  the  House  of  Commons  consisted  purel}'  of  church- 
men, whose  numbers  would  have  been  backed  by  the 
weight  of  their  property,  as  possessors  of  a  third  of  the 
landed  estates  of  the  realm. 

A  hardly  less  important  difference  may  be  found  in  the 
gradual  restriction  of  the  meetings  of  Parliament  to  West- 
minster. The  names  of  Edward's  statutes  remind  us  of 
its  convocation  at  the  most  various  quarters,  at  Win- 
chester, Acton  Burnell,  Northampton.  It  was  at  a  later 
time  that  Parliament  became  settled  in  the  straggling  vil- 
lage which  had  grown  up  in  the  marshy  swamp  of  the  Isle 
of  Thorns  beside  the  palace  whose  embattled  pile  towered 
over  the  Thames  and  the  new  West-minster  which  was 
still  rising  in  Edward's  day  on  the  site  of  the  older  church 
of  the  Confessor.  It  is  possible  that,  while  contributing 
greatly  to  its  constitutional  importance,  this  settlement  of 
the  Parliament  may  have  helped  to  throw  into  the  back- 
ground its  character  as  a  supreme  court  of  appeal.  The 
proclamation  by  which  it  was  called  together  invited  "  all 
who  had  any  grace  to  demand  of  the  King  in  Parliament, 
or  any  plaint  to  make  of  matters  which  could  not  be  re- 
dressed or  determined  by  ordinary  course  of  law,  or  who 
had  been  in  any  way  aggrieved  by  any  of  the  King's 


368  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISlI  PEOPLE.     [Book  III 

ministers  or  justices  or  sheriffs,  or  their  bailiffs,  or  any 
other  officer,  or  have  been  unduly  assessed,  rated,  charged, 
or  sur-charged  to  aids,  subsidies,  or  taxes, "  to  deliver  their 
petitions  to  receivers  who  sat  in  the  Great  Hall  of  the 
Palace  of  Westminster.  The  petitions  were  forwarded  to 
the  King's  Council,  and  it  was  probably  the  extension  of 
the  jurisdiction  of  that  body  and  the  rise  of  the  Court  of 
Chancery  which  reduced  this  ancient  right  of  the  subject 
to  the  formal  election  of  "  Triers  of  Petitions"  at  the 
opening  of  every  new  Parliament  by  the  House  of  Lords,  a 
usage  which  is  still  continued.  But  it  must  have  been 
owing  to  some  memory  of  the  older  custom  that  the  sub- 
ject always  looked  for  redress  against  injuries  from  the 
Crown  or  its  ministers  to  the  Parliament  of  the  realm. 

The  subsidies  granted  by  the  Parliament  of  1295  fur- 
nished the  King  with  the  means  of  warfare  with  both 
Scotland  and  France,  while  they  assured  him  of  the  sym- 
pathy of  his  people  in  the  contest.  But  from  the  first  the 
reluctance  of  Edward  to  enter  on  the  double  war  was 
strongly  marked.  The  refusal  of  the  Scotch  baronage  to 
obey  his  summons  had  been  followed  on  Balliol's  part  by 
two  secret  steps  which  made  a  struggle  inevitable,  by  a 
request  to  Rome  for  absolution  from  his  oath  of  fealty  and 
by  a  treaty  of  alliance  with  Philip  the  Fair.  As  yet  how- 
ever no  open  breach  had  taken  place,  and  while  Edward 
in  1296  summoned  his  knighthood  to  meet  him  in  the 
north  he  called  a  Parliament  at  Newcastle  in  the  hope  of 
bringing  about  an  accommodation  with  the  Scot  King. 
But  all  thought  of  accommodation  was  roughly  ended  by 
the  refusal  of  Balliol  to  attend  the  Parliament,  by  the  rout 
of  a  small  body  of  English  troops,  and  by  the  Scotch  in- 
vestment of  Carlisle.  Taken  as  he  was  by  surprise,  Ed- 
ward showed  at  once  the  vigor  and  rapidity  of  his  temper. 
His  army  marched  upon  Berwick.  The  town  was  a  rich 
and  well-peopled  one,  and  although  a  wooden  stockade 
furnished  its  only  rampart  the  serried  ranks  of  citizens^ 
behind  it  gave  little  hope  of  an  easy  conquest.     Their 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204^1291.  369 

taunts  indeed  stung  the  King  to  the  quick.  As  his  en- 
gineers threw  up  rough  entrenchments  for  the  besieging 
army  the  burghers  bade  him  wait  till  he  won  the  town 
before  he  began  digging  round  it.  "Kynge  Edward,** 
they  shouted,  "waune  thou  havest  Berwick,  pike  thee; 
waune  thou  havest  geten,  dike  thee."  But  the  stockade 
was  stormed  with  the  loss  of  a  single  knight,  nearly  eight 
thousand  of  the  citizens  were  mown  down  in  a  ruthless 
carnage,  and  a  handful  of  Flemish  traders  who  held  the 
town-hall  stoutly  against  all  assailants  were  burned  alive 
in  it.  The  massacre  only  ceased  when  a  procession  of 
priests  bore  the  host  to  the  King's  presence,  praying  for 
mercy.  Edward  with  a  sudden  and  characteristic  burst 
of  tears  called  off  his  troops ;  but  the  town  was  ruined  for- 
ever, and  the  greatest  merchant  city  of  northern  Britain 
sank  from  that  time  into  a  petty  sea- port. 

At  Berwick  Edward  received  Balliol's  formal  defiance. 
"  Has  the  fool  done  this  folly?"  the  King  cried  in  haughty 
scorn;  "if  he  will  not  come  to  us,  we  will  come  to  him." 
The  terrible  slaughter  however  had  done  its  work,  and  his 
march  northward  was  a  triumphal  progress.  Edinburgh, 
Stirling,  and  Perth  opened  their  gates,  Bruce  joined  the 
English  army,  and  Balliol  himself  surrendered  and  passed 
without  a  blow  from  his  throne  to  an  English  prison.  No 
further  punishment  however  was  exacted  from  the  pros- 
trate realm.  Edward  simply  treated  it  as  a  fief,  and  de- 
clared its  forfeiture  to  be  the  legal  consequence  of  Balliol's 
treason.  It  lapsed  in  fact  to  its  suzerain ;  and  its  earls, 
barons,  and  gentry  swore  homage  in  Parliament  at  Ber- 
wick to  Edward  as  their  King.  The  sacred  stone  on 
which  its  older  sovereigns  had  been  installed,  an  oblong 
block  of  limestone  which  legend  asserted  to  have  been  the 
pillow  of  Jacob  as  angels  ascended  and  descended  upon 
him,  was  removed  from  Scone  and  placed  in  Westminster 
by  the  shrine  of  the  Confessor.  It  was  enclosed  by  Ed- 
ward's order  in  a  stately  seat,  which  became  from  that 
hour  the  coronation  chair  of  English  Kings.  To  the  King 
Vol.  I.— 24 


370  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 


himself  the  whole  business  must  have  seemed  another  and 
easier  conquest  of  Wales,  and  the  mercy  and  just  govern- 
ment which  had  followed  his  first  success  followed  his 
second  also.  The  government  of  the  new  dependency  was 
entrusted  to  John  of  Warenne,  Earl  of  Surrey,  at  the  head 
of  an  English  Council  of  Regency.  Pardon  was  freely 
extended  to  all  who  had  resisted  the  invasion,  and  order 
and  public  peace  were  rigidly  enforced. 

But  the  triumph,  rapid  and  complete  as  it  was,  had 
more  than  exhausted  the  aids  granted  by  the  Parliament. 
The  treasury  was  utterly  drained.  The  struggle  indeed 
widened  as  every  month  went  on ;  the  costly  fight  with 
the  French  in  Gascony  called  for  supplies,  while  Edward 
was  planning  a  yet  costlier  attack  on  northern  France 
with  the  aid  of  Flanders.  Need  drove  him  on  his  return 
from  Scotland  in  1297  to  measures  of  tyrannical  extortion 
which  seemed  to  recall  the  times  of  John.  His  first  blow 
fell  on  the  Church.  At  the  close  of  1294  he  had  already 
demanded  half  their  annual  income  from  the  clergy,  and 
so  terrible  was  his  wrath  at  their  resistance  that  the  Dean 
of  St.  Paul's,  who  stood  forth  to  remonstrate,  dropped 
dead  of  sheer  terror  at  his  feet.  "  If  any  oppose  the  King's 
demand,"  said  a  royal  envoy  in  the  midst  of  the  Convoca- 
tion, "  let  him  stand  up  that  he  may  be  noted  as  an  enemy 
to  the  King's  peace."  The  outraged  Churchmen  fell  back 
on  an  untenable  plea  that  their  aid  was  due  solely  to  Rome, 
and  alleged  the  bull  of  "  Clericis  Laicos,"  issued  by  Boni- 
face the  Eighth  at  this  moment,  a  bull  which  forbade  the 
clergy  to  pay  secular  taxes  from  their  ecclesiastical  rev- 
enues, as  a  ground  for  refusing  to  comply  with  further 
taxation.  In  1297  Archbishop  Winch elsey  refused  on  the 
ground  of  this  bull  to  make  any  grant,  and  Edward  met 
his  refusal  by  a  general  outlawry  of  the  whole  order.  The 
King's  courts  were  closed,  and  all  justice  denied  to  those 
who  refused  the  King  aid.  By  their  actual  plea  the  clergy 
had  put  themselves  formally  in  the  wrong,  and  the  out- 
lawry soon  forced  them  to  submission ;  but  their  aid  did 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  371 

little  to  recruit  the  exhausted  treasury.  The  pressure  of 
the  war  steadily  increased,  and  far  wider  measures  of 
arbitrary  taxation  were  needful  to  equip  an  expedition 
which  Edward  prepared  to  lead  in  person  to  Flanders. 
The  country  gentlemen  were  compelled  to  take  up  knight- 
hood or  to  compound  for  exemption  from  the  burdensome 
honor,  and  forced  contributions  of  cattle  and  corn  were 
demanded  from  the  counties.  Edward  no  doubt  purposed 
to  pay  honestly  for  these  supplies,  but  his  exactions  from 
the  merchant  class  rested  on  a  deliberate  theory  of  his 
royal  rights.  He  looked  on  the  customs  as  levied  abso- 
lutely at  his  pleasure,  and  the  export  duty  on  wool — now 
the  staple  produce  of  the  country — was  raised  to  six  times 
its  former  amount.  Although  he  infringed  no  positive 
provision  of  charter  or  statute  in  his  action,  it  was  plain 
that  his  course  really  undid  all  that  had  been  gained  by 
the  Barons'  war.  But  the  blow  had  no  sooner  been  struck 
than  Edward  found  stout  resistance  within  his  realm. 
The  barons  drew  together  and  called  a  meeting  for  the 
redress  of  their  grievances.  The  two  greatest  of  the  Eng- 
lish nobles,  Humfrey  de  Bohun,  Earl  of  Hereford,  and 
Roger  Bigod,  Earl  of  Norfolk,  placed  themselves  at  the 
head  of  the  opposition.  The  first  was  Constable,  the  sec- 
ond Earl  Marshal,  and  Edward  bade  them  lead  a  force  to 
Gascony  as  his  lieutenants  while  he  himself  sailed  to 
Flanders.  Their  departure  would  have  left  the  Baronage 
without  leaders,  and  the  two  earls  availed  themselves  of  a 
plea  that  they  were  not  bound  to  foreign  service  save  in 
attendance  on  the  King  to  refuse  obedience  to  the  royal 
orders.  "By  God,  Sir  Earl,"  swore  the  King  to  the  Earl 
Marshal,  "you  shall  either  go  or  hang!"  "By  God,  Sir 
King,"  was  the  cool  reply,  "I  will  neither  go  nor  hang!" 
Both  parties  separated  in  bitter  anger;  the  King  to  seize 
fresh  wool,  to  outlaw  the  clergy,  and  to  call  an  army  to 
his  aid ;  the  barons  to  gather  in  arms,  backed  by  the  excom- 
munication of  the  Primate.  But  the  strife  went  on  further 
than  words.     Ere  the  Parliament  he  had  convened  could 


372  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


meet,  Edward  had  discovered  his  own  powerlessness ; 
Winchelsey  offered  his  mediation ;  and  Edward  confirmed 
the  Great  Charter  and  the  Charter  of  Forests  as  the  price 
of  a  grant  from  the  clergj'-  and  a  subsidy  from  the  Com- 
mons. With  one  of  those  sudden  revulsions  of  feeling  of 
which  his  nature  was  capable  the  King  stood  before  his 
people  in  Westminster  Hall  and  owned  with  a  burst  of 
tears  that  he  had  taken  their  substance  without  due  war- 
rant of  law.  His  passionate  appeal  to  their  loyalty  wrested 
a  reluctant  assent  to  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  and  in 
August  Edward  sailed  for  Flanders,  leaving  his  son  regent 
of  the  realm.  But  the  crisis  had  taught  the  need  of  fur- 
ther securities  against  the  royal  power,  and  as  Edward 
was  about  to  embark  the  barons  demanded  his  acceptance 
of  additional  articles  to  the  Charter,  expressly  renouncing 
his  right  of  taxing  the  nation  without  its  own  consent. 
The  King  sailed  without  complying,  but  Winchelsey 
joined  the  two  earls  and  the  citizens  of  London  in  forbid- 
ding any  levy  of  supplies  till  the  Great  Charter  with 
these  clauses  was  again  confirmed,  and  the  trouble  in 
Scotland  as  well  as  the  still  pending  strife  with  France  left 
Edward  helpless  in  the  barons'  hands.  The  Great  Charter 
and  the  Charter  of  the  Forests  were  solemnly  confirmed  by 
him  at  Ghent  in  November ;  and  formal  pardon  was  issued 
to  the  Earls  of  Hereford  and  Norfolk. 

The  confirmation  of  the  Charter,  the  renunciation  of  any 
right  to  the  exactions  by  which  the  people  were  aggrieved, 
the  pledge  that  the  King  would  no  more  take  "  such  aids, 
tasks,  and  prizes,  but  by  common  assent  of  the  realm,"  the 
promise  not  to  impose  on  wool  any  heavy  customs  or 
"  maletot"  without  the  same  assent,  was  the  close  of  the 
great  struggle  which  had  begun  at  Runnymede.  The 
clauses  so  soon  removed  from  the  Great  Charter  were  now 
restored ;  and  evade  them  as  they  might,  the  kings  were 
never  able  to  free  themselves  from  the  obligation  to  seek 
aid  solely  from  the  general  consent  of  their  subjects.  It 
was  Scotland  which  had  won  this  victory  for  English  free- 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1391.  373 

dom.  At  the  moment  when  Edward  and  the  earls  stood 
face  to  face  the  King  saw  his  work  in  the  north  suddenly 
undone.  Both  the  justice  and  injustice  of  the  new  rule 
proved  fatal  to  it.  The  wrath  of  the  Scots,  already  kindled 
by  the  intrusion  of  English  priests  into  Scotch  livings  and 
by  the  grant  of  lands  across  the  border  to  English  barons, 
was  fanned  to  fury  by  the  strict  administration  of  law  and 
the  repression  of  feuds  and  cattle-lifting.  The  disbanding 
too  of  troops,  which  was  caused  by  the  penury  of  the  roj'^al 
exchequer,  united  with  the  license  of  the  soldiery  who 
remained  to  quicken  the  national  sense  of  wrong.  The 
disgraceful  submission  of  their  leaders  brought  the  people 
themselves  to  the  front.  In  spite  of  a  hundred  years  of 
peace  the  farmer  of  Fife  or  the  Lowlands  and  the  artisan 
of  the  towns  remained  stout-hearted  Northumbrian  Eng- 
lishmen. They  had  never  consented  to  Edward's  suprem- 
acy, and  their  blood  rose  against  the  insolent  rule  of  the 
stranger.  The  genius  of  an  outlaw  knight,  William  Wal- 
lace, saw  in  their  smouldering  discontent  a  hope  of  free- 
dom for  his  country,  and  his  daring  raids  on  outlying 
parties  of  the  English  soldiery  roused  the  country  at  last 
into  revolt. 

Of  Wallace  himself,  of  his  life  or  temper,  we  know  little 
or  nothing ;  the  very  traditions  of  his  gigantic  stature  and 
enormous  strength  are  dim  and  unhistorical.  But  the  in- 
stinct of  the  Scotch  people  has  guided  it  aright  in  choosing 
him  for  its  national  hero.  He  was  the  first  to  assert  free- 
dom as  a  national  birthright,  and  amidst  the  despair  of 
nobles  and  priests  to  call  the  people  itself  to  arms.  At  the 
head  of  an  army  drawn  principally  from  the  coast  dis- 
tricts north  of  the  Tay,  which  were  inhabited  by  a  popu- 
lation of  the  same  blood  as  that  of  the  Lowlands,  Wallace 
in  September,  1297,  encamped  near  Stirling,  the  pass  be- 
tween the  north  and  the  south,  and  awaited  the  English 
advance.  It  was  here  that  he  was  found  by  the  English 
army.  The  offers  of  John  of  Warenne  were  scornfully 
rejected:  "We  have  come,"  said  the  Scottish  leader,  "not 


374  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 


to  make  peace,  but  to  free  our  country."  The  position  of 
Wallace  behind  a  loop  of  Forth  was  in  fact  chosen  with 
consummate  skill.  The  one  bridge  which  crossed  the 
river  was  only  broad  enough  to  admit  two  horsemen 
abreast ;  and  though  the  English  army  had  been  passing 
from  daybreak  but  half  its  force  was  across  at  noon  when 
Wallace  closed  on  it  and  cut  it  after  a  short  combat  to 
pieces  in  sight  of  its  comrades.  The  retreat  of  the  Earl  of 
Surrey  over  the  border  left  Wallace  head  of  the  country 
he  had  freed,  and  for  a  few  months  he  acted  as  "  Guardian 
of  the  Realm"  in  Balliol's  name,  and  headed  a  wild  foray 
into  Northumberland  in  which  the  barbarous  cruelties  of 
his  men  left  a  bitter  hatred  behind  them  which  was  to 
wreak  its  vengeance  in  the  later  bloodshed  of  the  war. 
His  reduction  of  Stirling  Castle  at  last  called  Edward  to 
the  field.  In  the  spring  of  1298  the  King's  diplomacy  had 
at  last  wrung  a  truce  for  two  years  from  Philip  the  Fair; 
and  he  at  once  returned  to  England  to  face  the  troubles  in 
Scotland.  Marching  northward  with  a  larger  host  than 
had  ever  followed  his  banner,  he  was  enabled  by  treachery 
to  surprise  Wallace  as  he  fell  back  to  avoid  an  engage- 
ment, and  to  force  him  on  the  twenty-second  of  July  to 
battle  near  Falkirk.  The  Scotch  force  consisted  almost 
wholly  of  foot,  and  Wallace  drew  up  his  spearmen  in  four 
great  hollow  circles  or  squares,  the  outer  ranks  kneeling 
and  the  whole  supported  by  bowmen  within,  while  a  small 
force  of  horse  were  drawn  up  as  a  reserve  in  the  rear.  It 
was  the  formation  of  Waterloo,  the  first  appearance  in  our 
history  since  the  day  of  Senlac  of  "that  unconquerable 
British  infantry"  before  which  chivalry  was  destined  to 
go  down.  For  a  moment  it  had  all  Waterloo's  success. 
"  I  have  brought  you  to  the  ring,  hop  (dance)  if  you  can," 
are  words  of  rough  humor  that  reveal  the  very  soul  of  the 
patriot  leader,  and  the  serried  ranks  answered  well  to  his 
appeal.  The  Bishop  of  Durham  who  led  the  English  van 
shrank  wisely  from  the  look  of  the  squares.  "Back  to 
yovir  mass,  Bishop,"  shouted  the  reckless  knights  bebin<3 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  375 

him,  but  the  body  of  horse  dashed  itself  vainly  on  the  wall 
of  spears.  Terror  spread  through  the  English  army,  and 
its  Welsh  auxiliaries  drew  off  in  a  body  from  the  field. 
But  the  generalship  of  Wallace  was  met  by  that  of  the 
King.  Drawing  his  bowmen  to  the  front,  Edward  riddled 
the  Scottish  ranks  with  arrows  and  then  hurled  his  cav- 
alry afresh  on  the  wavering  line.  In  a  moment  all  was 
over,  the  maddened  knights  rode  in  and  out  of  the  broken 
ranks,  slaying  without  mercy.  Thousands  fell  on  the 
field,  and  Wallace  himseK  escaped  with  diflQculty,  followed 
by  a  handful  of  men. 

But  ruined  as  the  cause  of  freedom  seemed,  his  work 
was  done.  He  had  roused  Scotland  into  life,  and  even  a 
defeat  like  Falkirk  left  her  unconquered.  Edward  re- 
mained master  only  of  the  ground  he  stood  on :  want  of 
supplies  forced  him  at  last  to  retreat ;  and  in  the  summer 
of  the  following  year,  1299,  when  Balliol,  released  from 
his  English  prison,  withdrew  into  France,  a  regency  of 
the  Scotch  nobles  under  Robert  Bruce  and  John  Comyn 
continued  the  struggle  for  independence.  Troubles  at 
home  and  danger  from  abroad  stayed  Edward's  hand. 
The  barons  still  distrusted  his  sincerity,  and  though  at 
their  demand  he  renewed  the  Confirmation  in  the  spring 
of  1299,  his  attempt  to  add  an  evasive  clause  saving  the 
right  of  the  Crown  proved  the  justice  of  their  distrust.  In 
spite  of  a  fresh  and  unconditional  renewal  of  it  a  strife 
over  the  Forest  Charter  went  on  till  the  opening  of  1301, 
when  a  new  gathering  of  the  barons  in  arms  with  the 
support  of  Archbishop  Winchelsey  wrested  from  him  its 
full  execution.  What  aided  freedom  within  was  as  of  old 
the  peril  without.  France  was  still  menacing,  and  a  claim 
advanced  by  Pope  Boniface  the  Eighth  at  its  suggestion 
to  the  feudal  superiority  over  Scotland  arrested  a  new  ad- 
vance of  the  King  across  the  border.  A  quarrel,  however, 
which  broke  out  between  Philip  le  Bel  and  the  Papacy 
removed  all  obstacles.  It  enabled  Edward  to  defy  Boni- 
face and  to  wring  from  France  a  treaty  in  which  Scotland 


376  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IIL 

was  abandoned.  In  1304  he  resumed  the  work  of  inva- 
sion, and  again  the  nobles  flung  down  their  arms  as  he 
marched  to  the  North.  Comyn,  at  the  head  of  the  Regency, 
acknowledged  his  sovereignty,  and  the  surrender  of  Stir- 
ling completed  the  conquest  of  Scotland.  But  the  triumph 
of  Edward  was  only  the  prelude  to  the  carrying  out  of  his 
designs  for  knitting  the  two  countries  together  by  a  gen- 
erosity and  wisdom  which  reveal  the  greatness  of  his 
statesmanship.  A  general  amnesty  was  extended  to  all 
who  had  shared  in  the  resistance.  Wallace,  who  refused 
to  avail  himself  of  Edward's  mercy,  was  captured  and 
condemned  to  death  at  Westminster  on  charges  of  treason, 
sacrilege,  and  robbery.  The  head  of  the  great  patriot, 
crowned  in  mockery  with  a  circlet  of  laurel,  was  placed 
upon  London  Bridge.  But  the  execution  of  Wallace  was 
the  one  blot  on  Edward's  clemency.  With  a  masterly 
boldness  he  entrusted  the  government  of  the  country  to  a 
council  of  Scotch  nobles,  many  of  whom  were  freshly  par- 
doned for  their  share  in  the  war,  and  anticipated  the  policy 
of  Cromwell  by  allotting  ten  representatives  to  Scotland  in 
the  Common  Parliament  of  his  realm.  A  Convocation 
was  summoned  at  Perth  for  the  election  of  these  repre- 
sentatives, and  a  great  judicial  scheme  which  was  pro- 
mulgated in  this  assembly  adopted  the  amended  laws  of 
King  David  as  the  base  of  a  new  legislation,  and  divided 
the  country  for  judicial  purposes  into  four  districts,  Loth- 
ian, Galloway,  the  Highlands,  and  the  land  between  the 
Highlands  and  the  Forth,  at  the  head  of  each  of  which 
were  placed  two  justiciaries,  the  one  English  and  the  other 
Scotch. 

With  the  conquest  and  settlement  of  Scotland  the  glory 
of  Edward  seemed  again  complete.  The  bitterness  of  his 
humiliation  at  home  indeed  still  preyed  upon  him,  and  in 
measure  after  measure  we  see  his  purpose  of  renewing  the 
strife  with  the  baronage.  In  1303  he  found  a  means  of 
evading  his  pledge  to  levy  no  new  taxes  on  merchandise 
save  by  assent  of  the  realm  in  a  consent  of  the  foreign 


Chap.  4.]  THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  377 

merchants,  whether  procured  by  royal  pressure  or  no,  to 
purchase  by  stated  payments  certain  privileges  of  trading. 
In  this  "  New  Custom"  lay  the  origin  of  our  import  duties. 
A  formal  absolution  from  his  promises  which  he  obtained 
from  Pope  Clement  the  Fifth  in  1305  showed  that  he 
looked  on  his  triumph  in  the  North  as  enabling  him  to  re- 
open the  questions  which  he  had  yielded.  But  again  Scot- 
land stajxd  his  hand.  Only  four  months  had  passed  since 
its  submission,  and  he  was  preparing  for  a  joint  Parlia- 
ment of  the  two  nations  at  Carlisle,  when  the  conquered 
country  suddenly  sprang  again  to  arms.  Its  new  leader 
was  Robert  Bruce,  a  grandson  of  one  of  the  original  claim- 
ants of  the  crown.  The  Norman  house  of  Bruce  formed 
a  part  of  the  Yorkshire  baronage,  but  it  had  acquired 
through  intermarriages  the  Earldom  of  Carrick  and  the 
Lordship  of  Annandale.  Both  the  claimant  and  his  son 
had  been  pretty  steadily  on  the  English  side  in  the  con- 
test with  Balliol  and  Wallace,  and  Robert  had  himself 
been  trained  in  the  English  court  and  stood  high  in  the 
King's  favor.  But  the  withdrawal  of  Balliol  gave  a  new 
force  to  his  claims  upon  the  crown,  and  the  discovery  of 
an  intrigue  which  he  had  set  on  foot  with  the  Bishop  of 
St.  Andrews  so  roused  Edward's  jealousy  that  Bruce  fled 
for  his  life  across  the  border.  Early  in  1306  he  met 
Comyn,  the  Lord  of  Badenoch,  to  whose  treachery  he  at- 
tributed the  disclosure  of  his  plans,  in  the  church  of  the 
Gray  Friars  at  Dumfries,  and  after  the  interchange  of  a 
few  hot  words  struck  him  with  his  dagger,  to  the  ground. 
It  was  an  outrage  that  admitted  of  no  forgiveness,  and 
Bruce  for  very  safety  was  forced  to  assume  the  crown  six 
weeks  after  in  the  Abbey  of  Scone.  The  news  roused 
Scotland  again  to  arms,  and  summoned  Edward  to  a  fresh 
contest  with  his  unconquerable  foe.  But  the  murder  of 
Comyn  had  changed  the  King's  mood  to  a  terrible  pitiless- 
ness.  He  threatened  death  against  all  concerned  in  the 
outrage,  and  exposed  the  Countess  of  Buchan,  who  had 
set  the  crown  on  Bruce's  head,  in  a  cage  or  open  chamber 


378  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  III. 

built  for  the  purpose  in  one  of  the  towers  of  Berwick.  At 
the  solemn  feast  which  celebrated  his  son's  knighthood 
Edward  vowed  on  the  swan  which  formed  the  chief  dish 
at  the  banquet  to  devote  the  rest  of  his  days  to  exact 
vengeance  from  the  murderer  himself.  But  even  at  the 
moment  of  the  vow  Bruce  was  already  flying  for  his  life  to 
the  western  islands.  "Henceforth,"  he  said  to  his  wife 
at  their  coronation,  "thou  art  Queen  of  Scotland  and  I 
King."  "  I  fear,"  replied  Mary  Bruce,  "  we  are  only  play- 
ing at  royalty  like  children  in  their  games."  The  play 
was  soon  turned  into  bitter  earnest.  A  small  English 
force  under  Aymer  de  Valence  sufficed  to  rout  the  disor- 
derly levies  which  gathered  round  the  new  monarch,  and 
the  flight  of  Bruce  left  his  followers  at  Edward's  mercy. 
Noble  after  noble  was  sent  to  the  block.  The  Earl  of 
Athole  pleaded  kindred  with  royalty.  "His  only  privi- 
lege," burst  forth  the  King,  "  shall  be  that  of  being  hanged 
on  a  higher  gallows  than  the  rest."  Knights  and  priests 
were  strung  up  side  by  side  by  the  English  justiciaries ; 
while  the  wife  and  daughters  of  Robert  Bruce  were  flung 
into  Edward's  prisons.  Bruce  himself  had  offered  to 
capitulate  to  Prince  Edward.  But  the  offer  only  roused 
the  old  King  to  fury.  "  Who  is  so  bold,"  he  cried,  "  as  to 
treat  with  our  traitors  without  our  knowledge?"  and  ris- 
ing from  his  sick  bed  he  led  his  army  northward  in  the 
summer  of  1307  to  complete  the  conquest.  But  the  hand 
of  death  was  upon  him,  and  in  the  very  sight  of  Scotland 
the  old  man  breathed  his  last  at  Burgh-upon-sands. 


BOOK   IV. 

THE  PARLIAMENT 

1307— 1461 


AUTHORITIES  FOR  BOOK  lY. 

For  Edward  the  Second  we  have  three  important  contemporaries : 
Thomas  de  la  More,  Trokelowe's  Annals,  and  the  life  by  a  monk  of 
Malmesbury  printed  by  Hearne.  The  sympathies  of  the  first  are 
with  the  King,  those  of  the  last  two  with  the  Barons.  Murimuth's 
short  Chronicle  is  also  contemporary.  John  Barbour's  "Bruce," 
the  great  legendary  storehouse  for  his  hero's  adventures,  is  histori- 
cally worthless. 

Important  as  it  is,  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  is  by  no  means 
fortunate  in  its  annalists.  The  concluding  part  of  the  Chronicle  of 
Walter  of  Hemingford  or  Heminburgh  seems  to  have  been  jotted 
down  as  news  of  the  passing  events  reached  its  author  :  it  ends  at 
the  battle  of  Cregy.  Hearne  has  published  another  contemporary 
account,  that  of  Robert  of  Avesbury,  which  closes  in  1356.  A  third 
account  by  Knyghton,  a  canon  of  Leicester,  will  be  found  in  the 
collection  of  Twysden.  At  the  end  of  this  century  and  the  begin- 
ning of  the  next  the  annals  which  had  been  carried  on  in  the  Abbey 
of  St.  Albans  were  thrown  together  by  Walsingham  in  the  "Historia 
Anglicana"  which  bears  his  name,  a  compilation  whose  history  may 
be  found  in  the  prefaces, to  the  "Chronica  Monasterii  S.  Albani" 
issued  in  the  Rolls  Series.  An  anonymous  chronicler  whose  work 
is  printed  in  the  23d  volume  of  the  "  Archaeologia"  has  given  us 
the  story  of  the  Good  Parliament,  another  accoimt  is  preserved  in 
the  "Chronica  Anglise  from  1328  to  1388, "  published  in  the  Rolls 
Series,  and  fresh  light  has  been  recently  thrown  on  the  time  by  the 
publication  of  a  Chronicle  by  Adam  of  Usk  which  extends  from 
1377  to  1404.  Fortunately  the  scantiness  of  historical  narrative  is 
compensated  by  the  growing  fulness  and  abundance  of  our  State- 
papers.  Rymer's  Foedera  is  rich  in  diplomatic  and  other  documents 
for  this  period,  and  from  this  time  we  have  a  storehouse  of  political 
and  social  information  in  the  Parliamentary  Rolls. 

For  the  French  war  itself  our  primary  authority  is  the  Chronicle 
of  Jehan  le  Bel,  a  canon  of  the  church  of  St.  Lambert  of  Liege,  wlio 
himself  served  in  Edward's  campaign  against  the  Scots  and  spent 
the  rest  of  his  life  at  the  court  of  John  of  Hainault.  Up  to  the 
Treaty  of  Bretigny,  where  it  closes,  Froissart  has  done  little  more 
than  copy  this  work,  making,  however,  large  additions  from  his  own 
inquiries,  especially  in  the  Flemish  and  Breton  campaigns  and  in 
the  account  of  Cregy.  Froissart  was  himself  a  Hainaulter  of  Valen- 
ciennes ;  he  held  a  post  in  Queen  Philippa's  household  from  1301  to 
1369,  and  under  this  influence  produced  in  1873  the  first  edition  of 
his  well-known  Chronicle.  A  later  edition  is  far  less  English  in 
tone,  and  a  third  version,  begun  by  him  in  his  old  age  after  long 
absence  from  England,  is  distinctly  French  in  it-!  sympathies. 
Froissart's  vivacity  and  picturesqueness  blind  us  to  the  inaccuracy 
of  his  details;  as  an  historical  authority  he  is  of  little  value.  The 
"  Fasciculi  Zizaniorum"  in  the  Rolls  Series  with  the  documents  ap- 
pended to  it  is  a  work  of  primary  anthoritj'^  for  the  history  of  Wyclif 
and  his  followers  :  a  selection  from  his  English  tracts  has  been  made 
by  Mr.  T.  Arnold  for  the  University  of  Oxford,  which  haa  also  pub- 


382  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 


lished  his  "Trias. "  The  version  of  the  Bible  that  bears  his  name 
has  been  edited  with  a  valuable  preface  by  the  Rev.  J.  Forshall  and 
Sir  F.  Madden.  William  Lougland's  poem,  "The  Complaint  of  Piers 
the  Plouj^hman"  (edited  by  Mr.  Skeat  for  the  Early  English  Text 
Society)  tlirovvs  a  tiood  of  light  on  the  social  state  of  England  after 
the  Treaty  of  Bretiguy. 

The  "  Annals  of  Richard  the  Second  and  Henry  the  Fourth, "  now 
published  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls,  are  our  main  authority  for  the 
period  which  follows  Edward's  death.  They  serve  as  the  basis  of 
the  St.  Alban's  compilation  which  bears  the  name  of  Walsingham, 
and  from  which  the  "Life  of  Richard,"  by  a  monk  of  Evesham  is 
for  the  most  part  derived.  The  same  violent  Lancastrian  sympathy 
runs  through  Walsingham  and  the  fifth  book  of  Knyghton's  Chroni- 
cle. The  French  authorities  on  the  other  hand  are  vehemently  on 
Richard's  side.  Froissart,  who  ends  at  this  time,  is  supplemented 
by  the  metrical  history  of  Creton  ("  Archaeologia, "  vol.  xx. )  and  by 
the  "Chronique  de  la  Traison  et  Mort  de  Richart"  (English  Histori- 
cal Society) ,  both  works  of  French  authors  and  published  in  France 
in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Fourth,  probably  with  the  aim  of  arousing 
French  feeling  against  the  House  of  Lancaster  and  the  war-policy 
which  it  had  revived.  The  popular  feeling  in  England  may  be  seen 
in  '•  Political  Songs  from  Edward  HI.  to  Richard  HI."  (Rolls  Series). 
A  poem  on  "The  Deposition  of  Richard  11."  which  has  been  pub- 
lished by  the  Camden  Society  is  now  ascribed  to  William  Longland. 
With  Henry  the  Fifth  our  historic  materials  become  more  abun- 
dant. We  have  the  "Acta  Henrici  Quinti"  by  Titus  Livius,  a  chap- 
lain in  the  royal  army  ;  a  life  by  Elmham,  prior  of  Lenton,  simpler 
in  style  but  identical  in  arrangement  and  facts  with  the  former 
work  ;  a  biography  by  Robert  Redman  ;  a  metrical  chronicle  by 
Elmham  (published  in  Rolls  Series  in  "Memorials  of  Henry  the 
Fifth")  ;  and  the  meagre  chronicles  of  Hardyng  and  Otterbourne. 
The  King's  Norman  campaigns  may  be  studied  in  M.  Puiseux's 
"Siege  de  Rouen"  (Caen,  1867).  The  "Wars  of  the  English  in 
France"  and  Blondel's  work  "De  Reductione  Normannise"  (both  in 
Rolls  Series)  give  ample  information  on  the  military  side  of  this 
and  the  next  reign.  But  with  the  accession  of  Henry  the  Sixth  we 
again  enter  on  a  period  of  singular  dearth  in  its  historical  authori- 
ties. The"Proces  de  Jeanne  d' Arc"  (published  by  the  Societe  de 
I'Histoire  de  France)  is  the  only  real  authority  for  her  history. 
For  English  affairs  we  are  reduced  to  the  meagre  accounts  of  William 
of  Worcester,  of  the  Continuator  of  the  Crowland  Chronicle,  and  of 
Fabyan.  Fabyan  is  a  London  alderman  with  a  strong  bias  in  favor 
of  the  House  of  Lancaster,  and  his  work  is  useful  for  London  only. 
The  Continuator  is  one  of  the  best  of  his  class ;  and  though  con- 
nected with  the  house  of  York,  the  date  of  his  work,  which  appeared 
soon  after  Bosworth  Field,  makes  him  fairly  impartial ;  but  he  is 
sketchy  and  deficient  in  information.  The  more  copious  narrative 
of  Polydore  Vergil  is  far  superior  to  these  in  literary  ability,  but  of 
later  date,  and  strongly  Lancastrian  in  tone.  For  the  struggle  be- 
tweer.  Edward  and  Warwick,  the  valuable  narrative  of  "  The  Arrival 
of  Edward  the  Fourth"  (Camden  Society)  may  be  taken  as  the  offi- 
cial account  on  the  royal  side.  The  Paston  Letters  are  the  first  in- 
stance in  English  history  of  a  family  correspondence,  and  throw 
oTftat  lierht  on  the  social  condition  ot  the  timet 


CHAPTER  I. 

EDWARD  II. 
1307—1337. 

In  his  calling  together  the  estates  of  the  realm  Edward 
the  First  determined  the  course  of  English  historj-.  From 
the  first  moment  of  its  appearance  the  Parliament  became 
the  centre  of  English  affairs.  The  hundred  years  indeed 
which  follow  its  assembly  at  Westminster  sav/  its  rise  into 
a  power  which  checked  and  overawed  the  Crown. 

Of  the  Kings  in  whose  reigns  the  Parliament  gathered 
this  mighty  strength  not  one  was  likely  to  look  with  in- 
difference on  the  growth  of  a  rival  authority,  and  the  bulk 
of  them  were  men  who  in  other  times  would  have  roughly 
checked  it.  What  held  their  hand  was  the  need  of  the 
Crown.  The  century  and  a  half  that  followed  the  gather- 
ing of  the  estates  at  Westminster  was  a  time  of  almost 
continual  war,  and  of  the  financial  pressure  that  springs 
from  war.  It  was  indeed  v/ar  that  had  gathered  them. 
In  calling  his  Parliament  Edward  the  First  sought  mainly 
an  effective  means  of  procuring  supplies  for  that  policy  of 
national  consolidation  wdiich  had  triumphed  in  Wales  and 
which  seemed  to  be  triumphing  in  Scotland.  But  the  tri- 
umph in  Scotland  soon  proved  a  delusive  one,  and  the 
strife  brought  wider  strifes  in  its  train.  When  Edward 
wrung  from  Balliol  an  acknowledgment  of  his  suzerainty 
he  foresaw  little  of  the  war  with  France,  the  war  with 
Spain,  the  quarrel  with  tlie  Papacy,  the  upgrowth  of  so- 
cial, of  political,  of  religious  revolution  within  England 
itself,  of  which  that  acknowledgment  was  to  be  the  pre- 
lude. But  the  thicker  troubles  gathered  round  England 
the  more  the  royal  treasurv  was  drained,  and  now  that  ar- 


384  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

bitrary  taxation  was  impossible  the  one  means  of  filling  it 
Jay  in  a  summons  of  the  Houses.  The  Crown  was  chained 
to  the  Parliament  by  a  tie  of  absolute  need.  From  the 
first  moment  of  parliamentary  existence  the  life  and  power 
of  the  estates  assembled  at  Westminster  hung  on  the  ques- 
tion of  supplies.  So  long  as  war  went  on  no  ruler  could 
dispense  with  the  grants  which  fed  the  war  and  which 
Parliament  alone  could  afford.  But  it  was  impossible  to 
procure  supplies  save  by  redressing  the  grievances  of  which 
Parliament  complained  and  by  granting  the  powers  which 
Parliament  demanded.  It  was  in  vain  that  King  after 
King,  conscious  that  war  bound  them  to  the  Parliament, 
strove  to  rid  themselves  of  the  war.  So  far  was  the  ambi- 
tion of  our  rulers  from  being  the  cause  of  the  long  struggle 
that,  save  in  the  one  case  of  Henry  the  Fifth,  the  desperate 
effort  of  every  ruler  was  to  arrive  at  peace.  Forced  as 
they  were  to  fight,  their  restless  diplomacy  strove  to  draw 
from  victory  as  from  defeat  a  means  of  escape  from  the 
strife  that  was  enslaving  the  Crown.  The  royal  Council, 
the  royal  favorites,  were  alwaj^s  on  the  side  of  peace.  But 
fortunately  for  English  freedom  peace  was  impossible. 
The  pride  of  the  English  peoj)le,  the  greed  of  France,  foiled 
every  attempt  at  accommodation.  The  wisest  ministers 
sacrificed  themselves  in  vain.  King  after  King  patched 
up  truces  which  never  grew  into  treaties,  and  concluded 
marriages  which  brought  fresh  discord  instead  of  peace. 
"War  went  ceaselessly  on,  and  with  the  march  of  war  went 
on  the  ceaseless  growth  of  the  Parliament. 

The  death  of  Edward  the  First  arrested  only  for  a  mo- 
ment the  advance  of  his  army  to  the  north.  The  Earl  of 
PembroKe  led  it  across  the  border,  and  found  himself  mas- 
ter of  the  country  without  a  blow,  Bruce 's  career  became 
that  of  a  desperate  adventurer,  for  even  the  Highland 
chiefs  in  whose  fastnesses  he  found  shelter  were  bitterly 
hostile  to  one  who  claimed  to  be  King  of  their  foes  in  the 
Lowlands.  It  was  this  adversity  that  transformed  the 
murderer  of  Comjm  into  the  noble  leader  of  a  nation's 


Chap.  1.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  385 

cause.  Strong  and  of  commanding  presence,  brave  and 
genial  in  temper,  Bruce  bore  the  hardships  of  his  career 
with  a  courage  and  hopefulness  that  never  failed.  In  the 
legends  that  clustered  round  his  name  we  see  him  listening 
in  Highland  glens  to  the  bay  of  the  bloodhounds  on  his 
track,  or  holding  a  pass  single-handed  against  a  crowd  of 
savage  clansmen.  Sometimes  the  small  band  which  clung 
to  him  were  forced  to  support  themselves  by  hunting  and 
fishing,  sometimes  to  break  up  for  safety  as  their  enemies 
tracked  them  to  their  lair.  Bruce  himself  had  more  than 
once  to  fling  off  his  coat-of-mail  and  scramble  barefoot  for 
very  life  up  the  crags.  Little  by  little  however  the  dark 
sky  cleared.  The  English  pressure  relaxed.  James  Doug- 
las, the  darling  of  Scottish  story,  was  the  first  of  the  Low- 
land Barons  to  rally  to  the  Bruce,  and  his  daring  gave 
heart  to  the  King's  cause.  Once  he  surprised  his  own 
house,  which  had  been  given  to  an  Englishman,  ate  the 
dinner  which  was  prepared  for  its  new  owner,  slew  his 
captives,  and  tossed  their  bodies  on  to  a  pile  of  wood  at 
the  castle  gate.  Then  he  staved  in  the  wine-vats  that  the 
wine  might  mingle  with  their  blood,  and  set  house  and 
wood-pile  on  fire. 

A  ferocity  like  this  degraded  everywhere  the  work  of 
freedom ;  but  the  revival  of  the  country  went  steadily  on. 
Pembroke  and  the  English  forces  were  in  fact  paralyzed 
by  a  strife  which  had  broken  out  in  England  between  the 
new  King  and  his  baronage.  The  moral  purpose  which 
had  raised  his  father  to  grandeur  was  wholly  wanting  in 
Edward  the  Second ;  he  was  showy,  idle,  and  stubborn  in 
temper ;  but  he  was  far  from  being  destitute  of  the  intel- 
lectual quickness  which  seemed  inborn  in  the  Plantagenets. 
He  had  no  love  for  his  father,  but  he  had  seen  him  in  the 
later  years  of  his  reign  struggling  against  the  pressure  of 
the  baronage,  evading  his  pledges  as  to  taxation,  and  pro- 
curing absolution  from  his  promise  to  observe  the  clauses 
added  to  the  Charter.  The  son's  purpose  was  the  same, 
that  of  throwing  off  what  he  looked  on  as  the  yoke  of  the 
Vol.  I.— 25 


386  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV, 


baronage;  but  the  means  by  which  he  designed  to  bring 
about  his  purpose  was  the  choice  of  a  minister  wholly  de- 
pendent on  the  Crown.  We  have  already  noticed  the 
change  by  which  the  "clerks  of  the  King's  chapel,"  who 
had  been  the  ministers  of  arbitrary  government  under  the 
Norman  and  Angevin  sovereigns,  had  been  quietly  super- 
seded by  the  prelates  and  lords  of  the  Continual  Council, 
At  the  close  of  the  late  reign  a  direct  demand  on  the  part 
of  the  barons  to  nominate  the  great  officers  of  state  had 
been  curtly  rejected ;  but  the  royal  choice  had  been  practi- 
cally limited  in  the  selection  of  its  ministers  to  the  class 
of  prelates  and  nobles,  and  however  closely  connected  with 
royalty  they  might  be  such  officers  always  to  a  great  ex- 
tent shared  the  feelings  and  opinions  of  their  order.  The 
aim  of  the  young  King  seems  to  have  been  to  undo  the 
change  which  had  been  silently  brought  about,  and  to  imi- 
tate the  policy  of  the  contemporary  sovereigns  of  France 
by  choosing  as  his  ministers  men  of  an  inferior  position, 
wholly  dependent  on  the  Crown  for  their  power,  and  rep- 
resentatives of  nothing  but  the  policy  and  interests  of 
their  master.  Piers  Gaveston,  a  foreigner  sprung  from 
a  family  of  Guienne,  had  been  his  friend  and  companion 
during  his  father's  reign,  at  the  close  of  which  he  had 
been  banished  from  the  realm  for  his  share  in  intrigues 
which  divided  Edward  from  his  son.  At  the  accession  of 
the  new  king  he  was  at  once  recalled,  created  Earl  of  Corn- 
wall, and  placed  at  the  head  of  the  administration.  When 
Edward  crossed  the  sea  to  wed  Isabella  of  France,  the 
daughter  of  Philip  the  Pair,  a  marriage  planned  by  his 
father  to  provide  against  any  further  intervention  of 
France  in  his  difficulties  with  Scotland,  the  new  minister 
was  left  as  Regent  in  his  room.  The  offence  given  by  this 
rapid  promotion  was  embittered  by  his  personal  temper. 
Gay,  genial,  thriftless,  Gaveston  showed  in  his  first  acts 
the  quickness  and  audacity  of  Southern  Gaal.  The  olde* 
ministers  were  dismissed,  all  claims  of  precedence  or  in- 
heritance were  set  aside  in  the  distribution  of  offices  at  the 


Chap,  1.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  387 


coronation,  while  taunts  and  defiances  goaded  the  proud 
baronage  to  fury.  The  favorite  was  a  fine  soldier,  and  hid 
lance  unhorsed  his  opponents  in  tourne}'  after  tourney. 
His  reckless  wit  flung  nicknames  about  the  Court;  tho 
Earl  of, Lancaster  was  "the  Actor,"  Pembroke  "the  Jew," 
Warwick  "  the  Black  Dog."  But  taunt  and  defiance  broke 
helplessly  against  the  iron  mass  of  the  baronage.  After  a 
few  months  of  power  the  formal  demand  of  the  Parliament 
for  his  dismissal  could  not  bo  resisted,  and  in  May,  1308, 
Gaveston  was  formally  banished  from  the  realm. 

But  Edward  was  far  from  abandoning  his  favorite.  In 
Ireland  he  was  unfettered  by  the  Baronage,  and  here  Gav- 
eston found  a  refuge  as  the  King's  Lieutenant  while  Ed- 
ward sought  to  obtain  his  recall  by  the  intervention  of 
France  and  the  Papacy.  But  the  financial  pressure  of  the 
Scotch  war  again  brought  the  King  and  his  Parliament 
together  in  the  spring  of  1309.  It  was  only  by  conceding 
the  rights  which  his  father  had  sought  to  establish  of  im- 
posing import  duties  on  the  merchants  by  their  own  assent 
that  he  procured  a  subsidy.  The  firmness  of  the  baronage 
sprang  from  their  having  found  a  head.  In  no  point  had 
the  policy  of  Henry  the  Third  more  utterly  broken  down 
than  in  his  attempt  to  weaken  the  power  of  the  nobles  by 
filling  the  great  earldoms  with  kinsmen  of  the  royal  house. 
He  had  made  Simon  of  Montfort  his  brother-in-law  only 
to  furnish  a  leader  to  the  nation  in  the  Barons'  war.  In 
loading  his  second  son,  Edmund  Crouchback,  with  honors 
and  estates  he  raised  a  family  to  greatness  which  overawed 
the  Crown.  Edmund  had  been  created  Earl  of  Lancaster ; 
after  Evesham  he  had  received  the  forfeited  Earldom  of 
Leicester ;  he  had  been  made  Earl  of  Derby  on  the  extinc- 
tion of  the  house  of  Ferrers.  His  son,  Thomas  of  Lancas- 
ter, was  the  son-in-law  of  Henry  de  Lacy,  and  was  soon 
to  add  to  these  lordships  the  Earldom  of  Lincoln.  And 
to  the  weight  of  these  great  baronies  was  added  his  royal 
blood.  The  father  of  Thomas  had  been  a  titular  King  of 
Sicily.     His  mother  was  dowager  Queen  of  Navarre.     His 


388  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV 

half-sister  by  the  mother's  side  was  wife  of  the  French 
King  Philip  le  Bel  and  mother  of  the  English  Queen  Isa- 
bella. He  was  himself  a  grandson  of  Henry  the  Third 
and  not  far  from  the  succession  to  the  throne.  Had  Earl 
Thomas  been  a  wiser  and  a  nobler  man,  his  adhesion  to 
the  cause  of  the  baronage  might  have  guided  the  King  into 
a  really  national  policy.  As  it  was  his  weight  proved  ir- 
resistible. When  Edward  at  the  close  of  the  Parliament 
recalled  Gaveston  the  Earl  of  Lancaster  withdrew  from 
the  royal  Council,  and  a  Parliament  which  met  in  the 
spring  of  1310  resolved  that  the  affairs  of  the  realm  should 
be  entrusted  for  a  year  to  a  body  of  twenty-one  "  Ordain- 
ers"  with  Archbishop  Winchelsey  at  their  head. 

Edward  with  Gaveston  withdrew  sullenly  to  the  North. 
A  triumph  in  Scotland  would  have  given  him  strength  to 
baffle  the  Ordainers,  but  he  had  little  of  his  father's  mili- 
tary skill,  the  wasted  country  made  it  hard  to  keep  an 
army  together,  and  after  a  fruitless  campaign  he  fell  back 
to  his  southern  realm  to  meet  the  Parliament  of  1311  and 
the  "  Ordinances"  which  the  twenty-one  laid  before  it.  By 
this  long  and  important  statute  Gaveston  was  banished, 
other  advisers  were  driven  from  the  Council,  and  the  Flor- 
entine bankers  whose  loans  had  enabled  Edward  to  hold 
the  baronage  at  bay  sent  out  of  the  realm.  The  customs 
duties  imposed  b}^  Edward  the  First  were  declared  to  be 
illegal.  Its  administrative  provisions  showed  the  relations 
which  the  barons  sought  to  establish  between  the  new  Par- 
liament and  the  Crown.  Parliaments  were  to  be  called 
every  year,  and  in  these  assemblies  the  King's  servants 
were  to  be  brought,  if  need  were,  to  justice.  The  great 
officers  of  state  were  to  be  appointed  with  the  counsel  and 
consent  of  the  baronage,  and  to  be  sworn  in  Parliament. 
The  same  consent  of  the  barons  in  Parliament  was  to  be 
needful  ere  the  King  could  declare  war  or  absent  himself 
from  the  realm.  As  the  Ordinances  show,  the  baronage 
still  looked  on  Parliament  rather  as  a  political  organization 
of  the  nobles  than  as  a  ga.thering  of  the  three  Estates  of 


Chap.  1.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  389 

the  realm.  The  lower  clergy  pass  unnoticed;  the  Com- 
mons are  regarded  as  mere  tax-payers  whose  part  was  still 
confined  to  the  presentation  of  petitions  of  grievances  and 
the  grant  of  money.  But  even  in  this  imperfect  fashion 
the  Parliament  was  a  real  representation  of  the  country. 
The  barons  no  longer  depended  for  their  force  on  the  rise 
of  some  active  leader,  or  gathered  in  exceptional  assem- 
blies to  wrest  reforms  from  the  Crown  by  threat  of  war. 
Their  action  was  made  regular  and  legal.  Even  if  the 
Commons  took  little  part  in  forming  decisions,  their  force 
when  formed  hung  on  the  assent  of  the  knights  and  bur- 
gesses to  them ;  and  the  grant  which  alone  could  purchase 
from  the  Crown  the  concessions  which  the  Baronage  de- 
manded lay  absolutely  within  the  control  of  the  Third 
Estate.  It  was  this  which  made  the  King's  struggles  so 
fruitless.  He  assented  to  the  Ordinances,  and  then  with- 
drawing to  the  North  recalled  Gaveston  and  annulled  them. 
But  Winchelsey  excommunicated  the  favorite  and  the  bar- 
ons, gathering  in  arms,  besieged  him  in  Scarborough. 
His  surrender  in  May,  1312,  ended  the  strife.  The  "  Black 
Dog"  of  Warwick  had  sworn  that  the  favorite  should  feel 
his  teeth ;  and  Gaveston  flung  himself  in  vain  at  the  feet 
of  the  Earl  of  Lancaster,  praying  for  pity  "  from  his  gen- 
tle lord."  In  defiance  of  the  terms  of  his  capitulation  he 
was  beheaded  on  Blacklow  Hill. 

The  King's  burst  of  grief  was  as  fruitless  as  his  threats 
of  vengeance ;  a  feigned  submission  of  the  conquerors  com- 
pleted the  royal  humiliation  and  the  barons  knelt  before 
Edward  in  Westminster  Hall  to  receive  a  pardon  which 
seemed  the  deathblow  of  the  royal  power.  But  if  Edward 
was  powerless  to  conquer  the  baronage  he  could  still  by 
evading  the  observances  of  the  Ordinances  throw  the  whole 
realm  into  confusion.  The  two  years  that  follow  Gaves- 
ton's  death  are  among  the  darkest  in  our  history.  A  ter- 
rible succession  of  famines  intensified  the  suffering  which 
sprang  from  the  utter  absence  of  all  rule  as  dissension 
raged  between  the  barons  and  the  King.     At  last  a  cow 


390  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  TEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

men  peril  drew  both  parties  together.  The  Scots  had 
profited  by  the  English  troubles  and  Bruce's  "harrying  of 
Eiichan"  after  his  defeat  of  its  Earl,  who  had  joined  the 
English  army,  fairly  turned  the  tide  of  success  in  his 
favor.  Edinburgh,  Roxburgh,  Perth,  and  most  of  the 
Scotch  fortresses  fell  one  by  one  into  King  Robert's  hands. 
The  clergy  met  in  council  and  owned  him  as  their  lawful 
lord.  Gradually  the  Scotch  barons  who  still  held  to  the 
English  cause  were  coerced  into  submission,  and  Bruce 
found  himself  strong  enough  to  invest  Stirling,  the  last 
and  the  most  important  of  the  Scotch  fortresses  which  held 
out  for  Edward.  Stirling  was  in  fact  the  key  of  Scotland, 
and  its  danger  roused  England  out  of  its  civil  strife  to  an 
effort  for  the  recovery  of  its  prey.  At  the  close  of  1313 
Edward  recognized  the  Ordinances,  and  a  liberal  grant 
from  the  Parliament  enabled  him  to  take  the  field.  Lan- 
caster indeed  still  held  aloof  on  the  ground  that  the  King 
had  not  sought  the  assent  of  Parliament  to  the  war,  but 
thirty  thousand  men  followed  Edward  to  the  North,  and  a 
host  of  wild  marauders  were  summoned  from  Ireland  and 
Wales.  The  army  which  Bruce  gathered  to  oppose  this 
inroad  was  formed  almost  wholly  of  footmen,  and  was 
stationed  to  the  south  of  Stirling  on  a  rising  ground  flanked 
by  a  little  brook,  the  Bannockburn,  which  gave  its  name 
to  the  engagement.  The  battle  took  place  on  the  twenty- 
fourth  of  June,  1314.  Again  two  systems  of  warfare  were 
brought  face  to  face  as  they  had  been  brought  at  Falkirk, 
for  Robert  like  Wallace  drew  up  his  forces  in  hollow- 
squares  or  circles  of  spearmen.  The  English  were  dis- 
pirited at  the  very  outset  by  the  failure  of  an  attempt  to 
relieve  Stirling  and  by  the  issue  of  a  single  combat  between 
Bruce  and  Henr}'  de  Bohun,  a  knight  who  bore  down  upon 
him  as  he  was  riding  peacefuhy  along  the  front  of  his 
army.  Robert  was  mounted  on  a  small  hackney  and  held 
only  a  light  battle-axe  in  his  hand,  but  warding  off  his 
opponent's  spear  he  cleft  his  skull  with  so  terrible  a  blow 
that  the  handle  of  his  axe  was  shattere^d  in  his  grasp.     A* 


Chap.  1.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  391 

the  opening  c^  the  battle  the  English  archers  were  thrown 
forward  to  rake  the  Scottish  squares,  but  they  were  with- 
out support  and  were  easily  dispersed  by  a  handful  of  horse 
whom  Bruce  held  in  reserve  for  the  purpose.  The  body 
of  meh-at-arms  next  ilung  themselves  on  the  Scottish  front, 
but  their  charge  was  embarrassed  by  the  narrow  space 
along  which  the  line  was  forced  to  move,  and  the  steady 
resistance  of  the  squares  soon  threw  the  knighthood  into 
disorder.  "  The  horses  that  were  stickit, "  says  an  exult- 
ing Scotch  writer,  "rushed  and  reeled  right  rudely,"  In 
the  moment  of  failure  the  sight  of  a  body  of  camp-follow- 
ers, whom  they  mistook  for  reinforcements  to  the  enemy, 
spread  panic  through  the  English  host.  It  broke  in  a 
headlong  rout.  Its  thousands  of  brilliant  horsemen  were 
soon  floundering  in  pits  which  guarded  the  level  ground 
to  Bruce's  left,  or  riding  in  wild  haste  for  the  border. 
Few  however  were  fortunate  enough  to  reach  it.  Edward 
himself,  with  a  body  of  five  hundred  knights,  succeeded 
in  escaping  to  Dunbar  and  the  sea.  But  the  flower  of  his 
knighthood  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victors,  while  the 
Irishry  and  the  footmen  were  ruthlessly  cut  down  by  the 
country  folk  as  they  fled.  For  centuries  to  come  the  rich 
plunder  of  the  English  camj)  left  its  traces  on  the  treasure- 
rolls  and  the  vestment-rolls  of  castle  and  abbej^  throughout 
the  Lowlands. 

Bannockburn  left  Bruce  the  master  of  Scotland:  but 
terrible  as  the  blow  was  England  could  not  humble  herself 
to  relinquish  her  claim  on  the  Scottish  crown.  Edward 
was  eager  indeed  for  a  truce,  but  with  equal  firmness 
Bruce  refused  all  negotiation  while  the  royal  title  was 
withheld  from  him  and  steadily  pushed  on  the  recovery 
of  his  southern  dominions.  His  progress  was  unhindered. 
Bannockburn  left  Edward  powerless,  and  Lancaster  at  the 
head  of  the  Ordainers  became  supreme.  But  it  was  still 
impossible  to  trust  the  King  or  to  act  with  him,  and  in  the 
dead-lock  of  both  parties  the  Scots  plunden-ed  as  they 
would.     Their  ravages  in  the  North  brought  shame  oa 


392  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

England  such  as  it  had  never  known.  At  last  Bnice's 
capture  of  Berwick  in  the  spring  of  1318  forced  the  King 
to  give  way.  The  Ordinances  were  formally  accepted,  an 
amnesty  granted,  and  a  small  number  of  peers  belonging  to 
the  barons'  party  added  to  the  great  officers  of  State.  Had 
a  statesman  been  at  the  head  of  the  baronage  the  weakness 
of  Edward  might  have  now  been  turned  to  good  purpose. 
But  the  character  of  the  Earl  of  Lancaster  seems  to  have 
fallen  far  beneath  the  greatness  of  his  position.  Distrust- 
ful of  his  cousin,  yet  himself  incapable  of  governing,  he 
stood  sullenly  aloof  from  the  royal  Council  and  the  royal 
armies,  and  Edward  was  able  to  lay  his  failure  in  recov- 
ering Berwick  during  the  campaign  of  1319  to  the  Earl's 
charge.  His  influence  over  the  country  was  sensibly  weak- 
ened ;  and  in  this  weakness  the  new  advisers  on  whom  the 
King  was  leaning  saw  a  hope  of  destroying  his  power. 
These  were  a  younger  and  elder  Hugh  Le  Despenser,  son 
and  grandson  of  the  Justiciar  who  had  fallen  beside  Earl 
Simon  at  Evesham.  Greedy  and  ambitious  as  they  may 
have  been,  they  were  able  men.  and  their  policy  was  of  a 
higher  stamp  than  the  wilful  defiance  of  Gaveston.  It 
lay,  if  we  may  gather  it  from  the  faint  indications  which 
remain,  in  a  frank  recognition  of  the  power  of  the  three 
Estates  as  opposed  to  the  separate  action  of  the  baronage. 
The  rise  of  the  younger  Hugh,  on  whom  the  King  be- 
stowed the  county  of  Glamorgan  with  the  hand  of  one  of 
its  coheiresses,  a  daughter  of  Earl  Gilbert  of  Gloucester, 
was  rapid  enough  to  excite  general  jealousy;  and  in  1321 
Lancaster  found  little  difficulty  in  extorting  by  force  of 
arms  his  exile  from  the  kingdom.  But  the  tide  of  popular 
sympathy  was  already  wavering,  and  it  was  turned  to  the 
royal  cause  by  an  insult  offered  to  the  Queen,  against 
whom  Lady  Badlesmere  closed  the  doors  of  Ledes  Castle. 
The  unexpected  energy  shown  by  Edward  in  avenging 
this  insult  gave  fresh  strength  to  his  cause.  At  the  open- 
ing of  1322  he  found  himself  strong  enough  to  recall  De- 
spenser, and  when  Lancaster  convoked  the  baronage  to 


Chap.  1.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  393 

force  him  again  into  exile  the  weakness  of  their  party  was 
shown  by  some  negotiations  into  which  the  Earl  entered 
with  the  Scots  and  by  his  precipitate  retreat  to  the  north 
on  the  advance  of  the  royal  army.  At  Boroughbridge  his 
forces  were  arrested  and  dispersed,  and  Thomas  himself, 
brought  captive  before  Edward  at  Pontefract,  was  tried 
and  condemned  to  death  as  a  traitor.  "  Have  mercy  on 
me.  King  of  Heaven,"  cried  Lancaster,  as,  mounted  on  a 
gray  pony  without  a  bridle,  he  was  hurried  to  execution, 
"for  my  earthly  King  has  forsaken  me."  His  death  was 
followed  by  that  of  a  number  of  his  adherents  and  by  the 
captivity  of  others ;  while  a  Parliament  at  York  annulled 
the  proceedings  against  the  Despensers  and  repealed  the 
Ordinances, 

It  is  to  this  Parliament,  however,  and  perhaps  to  the 
victorious  confidence  of  the  royalists,  that  we  owe  the 
famous  provision  which  reveals  the  policy  of  the  Despens- 
ers, the  provision  that  all  laws  concerning  "  the  estate  of 
our  Lord  the  King  and  his  heirs  or  for  the  estate  of  the 
realm  and  the  people  shall  be  treated,  accorded,  and  estab- 
lished in  Parliaments  by  our  Lord  the  King  and  by  the 
consent  of  the  prelates,  earls,  barons,  and  commonalty  of 
the  realm  according  as  hath  been  hitherto  accustomed." 
It  would  seem  from  the  tenor  of  this  remarkable  enact- 
ment that  much  of  the  sudden  revulsion  of  popular  feeling 
had  been  owing  to  the  assumption  of  all  legislative  action 
by  the  baronage  alone.  The  same  policy  was  seen  in  a 
reissue  in  the  form  of  a  royal  Ordinance  of  some  of  the 
most  beneficial  provisions  of  the  Ordinances  which  had 
been  formally  repealed.  But  the  arrogance  of  the  Despens- 
ers gave  new  offence ;  and  the  utter  failure  of  a  fresh  cam- 
paign against  Scotland  again  weakened  the  Crown.  The 
barbarous  forays  in  which  the  borderers  under  Earl  Doug- 
las were  wasting  Northumberland  woke  a  general  indig- 
nation ;  and  a  grant  from  the  Parliament  at  York  enabled 
Edward  to  march  with  a  great  army  to  the  North.  But 
Bruce  as  of  old  declined  an  engagement  till  the  wasted 


39i  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


Lowlands  starved  the  invaders  into  a  ruinous  retreat.  The 
faikire  forced  England  in  the  spring  of  1323  to  stoop  to  a 
truce  for  thirteen  years,  in  the  negotiation  of  which  Bruce 
was  suffered  to  take  the  royal  title.  We  see  in  this  act  of 
the  Despensers  the  first  of  a  series  of  such  attempts  by 
which  minister  after  minister  strove  to  free  the  Crown 
from  the  bondage  under  which  the  war-pressure  laid  it  to 
the  growing  power  of  Parliament ;  but  it  ended  as  these 
after  attempts  ended  only  in  the  ruin  of  the  counsellors 
who  planned  it.  The  pride  of  the  country  had  been  roused 
by  the  struggle,  and  the  humiliation  of  such  a  truce  robbed 
the  Crown  of  its  temporary  popularity.  It  led  the  way 
to  the  sudden  catastrophe  which  closed  this  disastrous 


reign. 


In  his  struggle  with  the  Scots  Edward,  like  his  father, 
had  been  hampered  not  only  by  internal  divisions  but  by 
the  harassing  intervention  of  France.  The  rising  under 
Bruce  had  been  backed  by  French  aid  as  well  as  by  a  re- 
vival of  the  old  quarrel  over  Guienne,  and  on  the  accession 
of  Charles  the  Fourth  in  1322  a  demand  of  homage  for 
Ponthieu  and  Gascony  called  Edward  over  sea.  But  the 
Despensers  dared  not  let  him  quit  the  realm,  and  a  fresh 
dispute  as  to  the  right  of  possession  in  the  Agenois  brought 
about  the  seizure  of  the  bulk  of  Gascony  by  a  sudden  at- 
tack on  the  part  of  the  French.  The  quarrel  verged  upon 
open  war,  and  to  close  it  Edward's  Queen,  Isabella,  a 
sister  of  the  French  King,  undertook  in  1325  to  revisit  her 
home  and  bring  about  a  treaty  of  peace  between  the  two 
countries.  Isabella  hated  the  Despensers ;  she  was  alien- 
ated from  her  husband ;  but  hatred  and  alienation  were  as 
yet  jealously  concealed.  At  the  close  of  the  year  the  terms 
of  peace  seemed  to  be  arranged ;  and  though  declining  to 
cross  the  sea,  Edward  evaded  the  difficulty  created  by  the 
demand  for  personal  homage  by  investing  his  son  with 
the  Duchies  of  Aquitaine  and  Gascony,  and  despatching 
him  to  join  his  mother  at  Paris.  The  boy  did  homage  to 
King  Charles  for  the  two  Duchies,  the  question  of  the 


Chap.  1.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  395 

Agenois  being  reserved  for  legal  decision,  and  Edward  at 
once  recalled  his  wife  and  sou  to  England.  Neither  threats 
nor  prayers,  however,  could  induce  either  wife  or  child  to 
return  to  his  court.  Roger  Mortimer,  the  most  powerful  of 
the  Marcher  barons  and  a  deadly  foe  to  the  Despensers,  had 
taken  refuge  in  France ;  and  his  influence  over  the  Queen 
made  her  the  centre  of  a  vast  conspiracy.  With  the  young 
Edward  in  her  hands  she  was  able  to  procure  soldiers  from 
the  Count  of  Hainault  by  promising  her  son's  hand  to  his 
daughter ;  the  Italian  bankers  supplied  funds ;  and  after 
a  j^ear's  preparation  the  Queen  set  sail  in  the  autumn  of 
1326.  A  secret  consiDiracy  of  the  baronage  was  revealed 
when  the  primate  and  nobles  hurried  to  her  standard  on 
her  landing  at  Orwell.  Deserted  by  all  and  repulsed  by 
the  citizens  of  London  whose  aid  he  implored,  the  King 
fled  hastily  to  the  west  and  embarked  with  the  Despensers 
for  Lundy  Island,  which  Despenser  had  fortified  as  a  possi- 
ble refuge;  but  contrary  winds  flung  him  again  on  the 
Welsh  coast,  where  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  Earl  Henry 
of  Lancaster,  the  brother  of  the  Earl  whom  they  had  slain. 
The  younger  Despenser,  who  accompanied  him,  was  at 
once  hung  on  a  gibbet  fifty  feet  high,  and  the  King  placed 
in  ward  at  Kenilworth  till  his  fate  could  be  decided  by  a 
Parliament  summoned  for  that  purpose  at  Westminster  in 
January,  1327. 

The  peers  who  assembled  fearlessly  revived  the  consti- 
tutional usage  of  the  earlier  English  freedom,  and  asserted 
their  right  to  depose  a  King  who  had  proved  himself  un- 
worthy to  rule.  Not  a  voice  was  raised  in  Edward's  be- 
half, and  only  four  prelates  protested  when  the  young 
Prince  was  proclaimed  King  by  acclamation  and  presented 
as  their  sovereign  to  the  multitudes  without.  The  revolu- 
tion took  legal  form  in  a  biU  which  charged  the  captive 
monarch  with  indolence,  incapacity,  the  loss  of  Scotland, 
the  violation  of  his  coronation  oath,  and  oppression  of  the 
Church  and  baronage;  and  on  the  approval  of  this  it  was 
resolved  that  the  reign  of  Edward  of  Caernarvon  had 


396  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

ceased  and  that  the  crown  had  passed  to  his  son,  Edward 
of  Windsor.  A  deputation  of  the  Parliament  proceeded 
to  Kenilworth  to  procure  the  assent  of  the  discrowned 
King  to  his  own  deposition,  and  Edward,  "  clad  in  a  plain 
black  gown,"  bowed  quietly  to  his  fate.  Sir  William 
Trussel  at  once  addressed  him  in  words  which  better  than 
any  other  mark  the  nature  of  the  step  which  the  Parlia- 
ment had  taken.  "I,  William  Trussel,  proctor  of  the 
earls,  barons,  and  others,  having  for  this  full  and  sufficient 
power,  do  render  and  give  back  to  you,  Edward,  once 
King  of  England,  the  homage  and  fealty  of  the  persons 
named  in  my  procuracy ;  and  acquit  and  discharge  them 
thereof  in  the  best  manner  that  law  and  custom  will  give. 
And  I  now  make  protestation  in  their  name  that  they  will 
no  longer  be  in  your  fealty  and  allegiance,  nor  claim  to 
hold  anything  of  you  as  king,  but  will  account  you  here- 
after as  a  private  person,  without  any  manner  of  royal 
dignity. "  A  significant  act  followed  these  emphatic  words. 
Sir  Thomas  Blount,  the  steward  of  the  household,  broke 
his  staff  of  office,  a  ceremony  used  only  at  a  king's  death, 
and  declared  that  all  persons  engaged  in  the  royal  service 
were  discharged.  The  act  of  Blount  was  only  an  omen 
of  the  fate  which  awaited  the  miserable  King.  In  the 
following  September  he  was  murdered  in  Berkeley  Castle. 


CHAPTER  II. 

EDWARD  THE  THIRD. 

1327—1347. 

The  deposition  of  Edward  the  Second  proclaimed  to  the 
world  the  power  which  the  English  Parliament  had  gained. 
In  thirty  years  from  their  first  assembly  at  Westminster 
the  Estates  had  wrested  from  the  Crown  the  last  relic  of 
arbitrary  taxation,  had  forced  on  it  new  ministers  and  a 
new  system  of  government,  had  claimed  a  right  of  con- 
firming the  choice  of  its  councillors  and  of  punishing  their 
misconduct,  and  had  established  the  principle  that  redress 
of  grievances  precedes  a  grant  of  supply.  Nor  had  the 
time  been  less  important  in  the  internal  growth  of  Parlia- 
ment. Step  by  step  the  practical  sense  of  the  Houses  them- 
selves completed  the  work  of  Edward  by  bringing  about 
change  after  change  in  its  composition.  The  very  division 
into  a  House  of  Lords  and  a  House  of  Commons  formed  no 
part  of  the  original  plan  of  Edward  the  First ;  in  the  ear- 
lier Parliaments  each  of  the  four  orders  of  clergy,  barons, 
knights,  and  burgesses  met,  deliberated,  and  made  their 
grants  apart  from  each  other.  This  isolation  however  of 
the  Estates  soon  showed  signs  of  breaking  down.  Though 
the  clergy  held  steadily  aloof  from  any  real  union  with  its 
fellow-orders,  the  knights  of  the  shire  were  drawn  by  the 
similarity  of  their  social  position  into  a  close  connection 
with  the  lords.  They  seemed  in  fact  to  have  been  soon 
admitted  by  the  baronage  to  an  almost  equal  position  with 
themselves,  whether  as  legislators  or  counsellors  of  the 
Crown.  The  burgesses  on  the  other  hand  took  little  part 
at  first  in  Parliamentary  proceedings,  save  in  those  which 
related  to  the  taxation  of  their  class.     But  their  position 


398  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

was  raised  by  the  strifes  of  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Sec- 
ond when  their  aid  was  needed  by  the  baronage  in  its 
struggle  with  the  Crown ;  and  their  right  to  share  fully  in 
all  legislative  action  was  asserted  in  the  statute  of  1322 
From  this  moment  no  proceedings  can  have  been  consid- 
ered as  formally  legislative  save  those  conducted  in  full 
Parliament  of  all  the  estates.  In  subjects  of  public  policy 
however  the  barons  were  still  regarded  as  the  sole  advis- 
ers of  the  Crown,  though  the  knights  of  the  shire  were 
sometimes  consulted  with  them.  But  the  barons  and 
knighthood  were  not  fated  to  be  drawn  into  a  single  body 
whose  weight  would  have  given  an  aristocratic  impress  to 
the  constitution.  Gradually,  through  causes  with  which 
we  are  imperfectly  acquainted,  the  knights  of  the  shire 
drifted  from  their  older  connection  with  the  baronage  into 
so  close  and  intimate  a  union  with  the  representatives  of 
the  towns  that  at  the  opening  of  the  reign  of  Edward  the 
Third  the  two  orders  are  found  grouped  formally  together, 
under  the  name  of  "The  Commons."  It  is  difficult  to 
over-estimate  the  importance  of  this  change.  Had  Par- 
liament remained  broken  up  into  its  four  orders  of  clergy, 
barons,  knights,  and  citizens,  its  power  would  have  been 
neutralized  at  every  great  crisis  by  the  jealousies  and 
difficulty  of  co-operation  among  its  component  parts.  A 
permanent  union  of  the  knighthood  and  the  baronage  on 
the  other  hand  would  have  converted  Parliament  into  the 
mere  representative  of  an  aristocratic  caste,  and  would 
have  robbed  it  of  the  strength  which  it  has  drawn  from 
its  connection  with  the  great  body  of  the  commercial 
classes.  The  new  attitude  of  the  knighthood,  their  social 
connection  as  landed  gentry  with  the  baronage,  their  polit- 
ical union  with  the  burgesses,  really  welded  the  three 
orders  into  one,  and  gave  that  unity  of  feeling  and  action 
to  our  Parliament  on  which  its  power  has  ever  since  mainly 
depended. 

The  weight  of  the  two  Houses  was  seen  in  their  settle- 
ment of  the  new  government  by  the  nomination  of  a  Coun- 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.    1307—1461.  309 

cil  with  Earl  Henry  of  Lancaster  at  its  head.  The  Coun- 
cil had  at  once  to  meet  fresh  difficulties  in  the  North. 
The  truce  so  recently  made  ceased  legally  with  Edward's 
deposition;  and  the  withdrawal  of  his  royal  title  in  fur- 
ther offers  of  peace  warned  Bruce  of  the  new  temper  of 
the  English  rulers.  Troops  gathered  on  either  side,  and 
the  English  Council  sought  to  pave  the  way  for  an  attack 
by  dividing  Scotland  against  itself.  Edward  Balliol,  a 
son  of  the  former  King  John,  was  solemnly  received  as  a 
vassal-king  of  Scotland  at  the  English  court.  Robert  was 
disabled  by  leprosy  from  taking  the  field  in  person,  but 
the  insult  roused  him  to  hurl  his  marauders  again  over 
the  border  under  Douglas  and  Sir  Thomas  Randolph. 
The  Scotch  army  has  been  painted  for  us  by  an  eye-wit- 
ness whose  description  is  embodied  in  the  work  of  Jehan 
le  Bel.  "  It  consisted  of  four  thousand  men-at-arms, 
knights,  and  esquires,  well  mounted,  besides  twenty  thou- 
sand men  bold  and  hardy,  armed  after  the  manner  of  their 
country,  and  mounted  upon  little  hackneys  that  are  never 
tied  up  or  dressed,  but  turned  immediately  after  the  day's 
march  to  pasture  on  the  heath  or  in  the  fields.  .  .  .  They 
bring  no  carriages  with  them  on  account  of  the  mountains 
they  have  to  pass  in  Northumberland,  neither  do  they 
carry  with  them  any  provisions  of  bread  or  wine,  for  their 
habits  of  sobriety  are  such  in  time  of  war  that  they  will 
live  for  a  long  time  on  flesh  half-sodden  without  bread, 
and  drink  the  river  water  without  wine.  They  have  there- 
fore no  occasion  for  pots  or  pans,  for  they  dress  the  flesh 
of  the  cattle  in  their  skins  after  they  have  flayed  them, 
and  being  sure  to  find  plentj'"  of  them  in  the  country  which 
they  invade  they  carry  none  with  them.  Under  the  flaps 
of  his  saddle  each  man  carries  a  broad  piece  of  metal,  be- 
hind him  a  little  bag  of  oatmeal :  when  they  have  eaten 
too  much  of  the  sodden  flesh  and  their  stomach  appears 
weak  and  empty,  they  set  this  plate  over  the  fire,  knead 
the  meal  with  water,  and  when  the  plate  is  hot  put  a  little 
of  the  paste  upon  it  in  a  thin  cake  like  a  biscuit,  which 


400  HISTORY  Or   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  l\ 


they  eat  to  warm  their  stomachs.  It  is  therefore  no  won- 
der that  they  perform  a  longer  day's  march  than  other 
soldiers."  Though  twenty  thousand  horsemen  and  forty 
thousand  foot  marched  under  their  boy-king  to  protect  the 
border,  the  English  troops  were  utterly  helpless  against 
such  a  foe  as  this.  At  one  time  the  whole  army  lost  its 
way  in  the  border  wastes;  at  another  all  traces  of  the 
enemy  disappeared,  and  an  offer  of  knighthood  and  a  hun- 
dred marks  was  made  to  any  who  could  tell  where  the 
Scots  were  encamped.  But  when  they  were  found  their 
position  behind  the  Wear  proved  unassailable,  and  after 
a  bold  sally  on  the  English  camp  Douglas  foiled  an  at- 
tempt at  intercepting  him  by  a  clever  retreat.  The  Eng- 
lish levies  broke  hopelessly  up,  and  a  fresh  foray  into 
Northumberland  forced  the  English  Court  in  1328  to  sub- 
mit to  peace.  By  the  treaty  of  Northampton  which  was 
solemnly  confirmed  by  Parliament  in  September  the  inde- 
pendence of  Scotland  was  recognized,  and  Robert  Bruce 
owned  as  its  King.  Edward  formally  abandoned  his  c^.aim 
of  feudal  superiority  over  Scotland;  while  Bruce  prom- 
ised to  make  compensation  for  the  damage  done  in  the 
North,  to  marry  his  son  David  to  Edward's  sister  Joan, 
and  to  restore  their  forfeited  estates  to  those  nobles  who 
bad  sided  with  the  English  King. 

But  the  pride  of  England  had  been  too  much  roused  by 
the  struggle  with  the  Scots  to  bear  this  defeat  easily,  and 
the  first  result  of  the  treaty  of  Northampton  was  the  over- 
throw of  the  government  which  concluded  it.  This  result 
was  hastened  by  the  pride  of  Roger  Mortimer,  who  was 
now  created  Earl  of  March,  and  who  had  made  himself 
supreme  through  his  influence  over  Isabella  and  his  exclu- 
sion of  the  rest  of  the  nobles  from  all  practical  share  in  the 
administration  of  the  realm.  The  first  efforts  to  shake 
Roger's  power  were  unsuccessful.  The  Earl  of  Lancaster 
stood,  like  his  brother,  at  the  head  of  the  baronage;  the 
parliamentary  settlement  at  Edward's  accession  had  placed 
him  first  in  the  royal  CounciU  and  it  was  to  him  that  the 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  401 


task  of  defying  Mortimer  naturally  fell.  At  the  close  of 
1328  therefore  Earl  Henry  formed  a  league  with  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  and  with  the  young  King's  uncles, 
the  Earls  of  Norfolk  and  Kent,  to  bring  Mortimer  to  ac- 
count ,for  the  peace  with  Scotland  and  the  usurpation  of 
the  government  as  well  as  for  the  late  King's  murder,  a 
murder  which  had  been  the  work  of  his  private  partisans 
and  which  had  profoundly  shocked  the  general  conscience. 
But  the  young  King  clave  firmly  to  his  mother,  the  Earls 
of  Norfolk  and  Kent  deserted  to  Mortimer,  and  powerful 
as  it  seemed  the  league  broke  up  without  result.  A  feel- 
ing of  insecurity  however  spurred  the  Earl  of  March  to  a 
bold  stroke  at  his  opponents.  The  Earl  of  Kent,  who  was 
persuaded  that  his  brother,  Edward  the  Second,  still  lived 
a  prisoner  in  Corfe  Castle,  was  arrested  on  a  charge  of 
conspiracy  to  restore  him  to  the  throne,  tried  before  a  Par- 
liament filled  with  Mortimer's  adherents,  and  sent  to  the 
block.  But  the  death  of  a  prince  of  the  royal  blood  roused 
the  young  King  to  resentment  at  the  greed  and  arrogance 
of  a  minister  who  treated  Edward  himself  as  little  more 
than  a  state-prisoner,  A  few  months  after  his  uncle's  ex- 
ecution the  King  entered  the  Council  chamber  in  Notting- 
ham Castle  with  a  force  which  he  had  introduced  through 
a  secret  passage  in  the  rock  on  which  it  stands,  and  ar- 
rested Mortimer  with  his  own  hands.  A  Parliament  which 
was  at  once  summoned  condemned  the  Earl  of  March  to  a 
traitor's  death,  and  in  November,  1330,  he  was  beheaded  at 
Tyburn,  while  the  Queen-mother  was  sent  for  the  rest  of 
her  life  into  confinement  at  Castle  Rising. 

Young  as  he  was,  and  he  had  only  reached  his  eigh- 
teenth year,  Edward  at  once  assumed  the  control  of  affairs. 
His  first  care  was  to  restore  good  order  throughout  the 
country,  which  under  the  late  government  had  fallen  into 
ruin,  and  to  free  his  hands  by  a  peace  with  France  for 
further  enterprises  in  the  North.  A  formal  peace  had 
been  concluded  by  Isabella  after  her  husband's  fall;  but 
the  death  of  Charles  the  Fourth  soon  brought  about  new 
Vol.  I.— 26 


402  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


jealousies  between   the  two  courts.     The  three  sons  of 
Philip  the  Fair  had  followed  him  on  the  throne  in  succes- 
sion, but  all  had  now  died  without  male  issue,  and  Isabella, 
as  Philip's  daughter,  claimed  the  crown  for  her  son.     The 
claim  in  any  case  was  a  hard  one  to  make  out.     Though 
her  brothers  had  left  no  sons,  they  had  left  daughters,  and 
if  female  succession  were  admitted  these  daughters  of 
Philip's  sons  would  precede  a  son  of  Philip's  daughter. 
Isabella  met  this  difficulty  by  a  contention  that  though 
females  could  transmit  the  right  of  succession  they  could 
not  themselves  possess  it,  and  that  her  son,  as  the  nearest 
living  male  descendant  of  Philip  the  Fair,  and  born  in  the 
lifetime  of  the  King  from  whom  he  claimed,  could  claim 
in  preference  to  females  who  were  related  to  Philip  in  as 
near  a  degree.     But  the  bulk  of  French  jurists  asserted 
that  only  male  succession  gave  right  to  the  French  throne. 
On  such  a  theory  the  right  inheritable  from  Philip  the 
Fair  was  exhausted ;  and  the  crown  passed  to  the  son  of 
Philip's  younger  brother,  Charles  of  Valois,  who  in  fact 
peacefully  mounted  the  throne  as  Philip  the  Fifth.     Purely 
formal  as  the  claim  which  Isabella  advanced  seems  to  have 
been,  it  revived  the  irritation  between  the  two  courts,  and 
though  Edward's  obedience  to  a  summons  which  Philip 
addressed  to  him  to  do  homage  for  Aquitaine  brought 
about  an  agreement  that  both  parties  should  restore  the 
gains  they  had  made  since  the  last  treaty  the  agreement 
was  never  carried  out.     Fresh  threats  of  war  ended  in  the 
conclusion  of  a  new  treaty  of  peace,   but  the  question 
whether  liege  or  simple  homage  was  due  for  the  duchies 
lemained  unsettled  when  the  fall  of  Mortimer  gave  the 
young  King  full  mastery  of  affairs.     His  action  was  rapid 
and  decisive.     Clad  as  a  merchant,  and  with  but  fifteen 
horsemen  at  his  back,  Edward  suddenly  made  his  appear- 
ance in  1331  at  the  French  court  and  did  homage  as  fully 
as  Philip  required.     The  question  of  the  Agenois  remained 
unsettled,  though  the  English  Parliament  insisted  that  its 
decision  should  rest  with  negotiation  and  not  with  war, 


(IHAP.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.    1307—1461.  403 

but  on  all  other  points  a  complete  peace  was  made ;  and 
the  young  King  rode  back  with  his  hands  free  for  an  at- 
tack which  he  was  planning  on  the  North. 

The  provisions  of  the  Treaty  of  Northampton  for  the 
restitution  of  estates  had  never  been  fully  carried  out.  Till 
this  was  done  the  English  court  held  that  the  rights  of 
feudal  superiority  over  Scotland  which  it  had  yielded  in  the 
treaty  remained  in  force ;  and  at  this  moment  an  opening 
seemed  to  present  itself  for  again  asserting  these  rights 
with  success.  Fortune  seemed  at  last  to  have  veered  to 
the  English  side.  The  death  of  Robert  Bruce  only  a  year 
after  the  Treaty  of  Northampton  left  the  Scottish  throne 
to  his  son  David,  a  child  of  but  eight  years  old.  The 
death  of  the  King  was  followed  by  the  loss  of  Randolph 
and  Douglas ;  and  the  internal  diflSculties  of  the  realm 
broke  out  in  civil  strife.  To  the  great  barons  on  either 
side  the  border  the  late  peace  involved  serious  losses,  for 
many  of  the  Scotch  houses  held  large  estates  in  England 
as  many  of  the  English  lords  held  large  estates  in  Scot- 
land, and  although  the  treaty  had  provided  for  their  claims 
they  had  in  each  case  been  practically  set  aside.  It  is  this 
discontent  of  the  barons  at  the  new  settlement  which  ex- 
plains the  sudden  success  of  Edward  Balliol  in  a  snatch 
which  he  made  at  the  Scottish  throne.  Balliol's  design 
was  known  at  the  English  court,  where  he  had  found  shel- 
ter for  some  years ;  and  Edward,  whether  sincerely  or  no, 
forbade  his  barons  from  joining  him  and  posted  troops  on 
the  border  to  hinder  his  crossing  it.  But  Balliol  found 
little  diflficulty  in  making  his  attack  by  sea.  He  sailed 
from  England  at  the  head  of  a  body  of  nobles  who  claimed 
estates  in  the  north,  landed  in  August,  1332,  on  the  shores 
of  Fife,  and  after  repulsing  with  immense  loss  an  army 
which  attacked  him  near  Perth  was  crowned  at  Scone  two 
months  after  his  landing,  while  David  Bruce  fled  helplessly 
to  France.  Edward  had  given  no  open  aid  to  this  enter- 
prise, but  the  crisis  tempted  his  ambition,  and  he  demanded 
and  obtained  from  Balliol  an  acknowledgment  of  the  Eng- 


404  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

^*"  ■  ■      ■       "        '  -  ■■  — ■  ■  ■,..■■  ,,  I  I   ,.  -         ■■■-■■■  .    .- 

lish  suzerainty.  The  acknowledgment  however  was  fata' 
to  Balliol  himself.  Surprised  at  Annan  by  a  party  of  Scot 
tish  nobles,  their  sudden  attack  drove  him  in  December 
over  the  border  after  a  reign  of  but  five  months ;  and  Ber- 
wick, which  he  had  agreed  to  surrender  to  Edward,  was 
strongly  garrisoned  against  an  English  attack.  The  sud- 
den breakdown  of  his  vassal-king  left  Edward  face  to  face 
with  a  new  Scotch  war.  The  Parliament  which  he  sum- 
moned to  advise  on  the  enforcement  of  his  claim  showed 
no  wish  to  plunge  again  into  the  contest  and  met  him  onlj" 
with  evasions  and  delays.  But  Edward  had  gone  too  far 
to  withdraw.  In  March,  1333,  he  appeared  before  Berwick, 
and  besieged  the  town.  A  Scotch  army  under  the  regent, 
Sir  Archibald  Douglas,  brother  to  the  famous  Sir  James, 
advanced  to  its  relief  in  July  and  attacked  a  covering  force 
which  was  encamped  on  the  strong  position  of  Halidon 
Hill.  The  English  bowmen  however  vindicated  the  fame 
they  had  first  won  at  Falkirk  and  were  soqu  to  crown  in 
the  victory  of  Cregy.  The  Scotch  only  struggled  through 
the  marsh  which  covered  the  English  front  to  be  riddled 
with  a  storm  of  arrows  and  to  break  in  utter  rout.  The 
battle  decided  the  fate  of  Berwick.  From  that  time  the 
town  has  remained  English  territory.  It  was  in  fact  the 
one  part  of  Edward's  conquests  which  was  preserved  in 
the  end  by  the  English  crown.  But  fragment  as  it  was, 
it  was  always  viewed  legally  as  representing  the  realm  of 
which  it  once  formed  a  part.  As  Scotland,  it  had  its  chan- 
cellor, chamberlain,  and  other  officers  of  State:  and  the 
peculiar  heading  of  Acts  of  Parliament  enacted  for  Eng- 
land "  and  the  town  of  Berwick-upon-Tweed"  still  preserves 
the  memory  of  its  peculiar  position.  But  the  victory 
did  more  than  give  Berwick  to  England.  The  defeat 
of  Douglas  was  followed  by  the  submission  of  a  large 
part  of  the  Scotch  nobles,  by  the  flight  of  the  boj'- 
king  David,  and  by  the  return  of  Balliol  unopposed  to 
the  throne.  Edward  exacted  a  heavy  price  for  his  aid. 
All   Scotland  south  of  the  Firth  of  Forth  was  ceded  to 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.    1307—1461.  405 

England,  and  Balliol  did  homage  as  vassal-king  for  the 
rest. 

It  was  at  the  moment  of  this  submission  that  the  young 
King  reached  the  climax  of  his  success.  A  king  at  four- 
teen, a  father  at  seventeen,  he  had  carried  out  at  eighteen 
a  political  revolution  in  the  overthrow  of  Mortimer,  and 
restored  at  twenty-two  the  ruined  work  of  his  grandfather. 
The  northern  frontier  was  carried  to  its  old  line  under  the 
Northumbrian  kings.  His  kingdom  within  was  peaceful 
and  orderly;  and  the  strife  with  France  seemed  at  an  end. 
During  the  next  three  years  Edward  persisted  in  the  line 
of  policy  he  had  adopted,  retaining  his  hold  over  Southern 
Scotland,  aiding  his  sub-king  Balliol  in  campaign  after 
campaign  against  the  despairing  efforts  of  the  nobles  who 
still  adhered  to  the  house  of  Bruce,  a  party  who  were  now 
headed  by  Robert  the  Steward  of  Scotland  and  by  Earl 
Randolph  of  Moray.  His  perseverance  was  all  but  crowned 
with  success,  when  Scotland  was  again  saved  by  the  in- 
tervention of  France.  Th.  successes  of  Edward  roused 
anew  the  jealousy  of  the  French  court.  David  Bruce 
found  a  refuge  with  Philip ;  French  ships  appeared  off 
the  Scotch  coast  and  brought  aid  to  the  patriot  nobles ;  and 
the  old  legal  questions  about  the  Agenois  and  Aquitaine 
were  mooted  afresh  by  the  French  council.  For  a  time 
Edward  staved  off  the  contest  by  repeated  embassies ;  but 
his  refusal  to  accept  Philip  as  a  mediator  between  England 
and  the  Scots  stirred  France  to  threats  of  war.  In  1335 
fleets  gathered  on  its  coast,  descents  were  made  on  the 
English  shores,  and  troops  and  galleys  were  hired  in  Italy 
and  the  north  for  an  invasion  of  England.  The  mere  threat 
of  war  saved  Scotland.  Edward's  forces  there  were  drawn 
to  the  south  to  meet  the  looked-for  attack  from  across  the 
Channel ;  and  the  patriot  party  freed  from  their  pressure 
at  once  drew  together  again.  The  actual  declaration  of 
war  against  France  at  the  close  of  1337  was  the  knell  of  Bal- 
liol's  greatness ;  he  found  himself  without  an  adherent  and 
withdrew  two  years  later  to  the  court  of  Edward,  while 


40G  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLTSH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

David  returned  to  his  kingdom  in  1342  and  won  back  the 
chief  fastnesses  of  the  Lowlands.  From  that  moment  the 
freedom  of  Scotland  was  secured.  From  a  war  of  conquest 
and  patriotic  resistance  the  struggle  died  into  a  petty  strife 
between  two  angry  neighbors,  which  became  a  mere  epi- 
sode in  the  larger  contest  which  it  had  stirred  between 
England  and  France. 

Whether  in  its  national  or  in  its  European  bearings  it  is 
difficult  to  over-estimate  the  importance  of  the  contest 
which  was  now  to  open  between  these  two  nations.  To 
England  it  brought  a  social,  a  religious,  and  in  the  end  a 
political  revolution.  The  Peasant  Revolt,  Lollardry,  and 
the  New  Monarchy  were  direct  issues  of  the  Hundred 
Years'  War.  With  it  began  the  military  renown  of  Eng- 
land ;  with  it  opened  her  struggle  for  the  mastery  of  the 
seas.  The  pride  begotten  by  great  victories  and  a  sudden 
revelation  of  warlike  prowess  roused  the  country  not  only 
to  a  new  ambition,  a  new  resolve  to  assert  itself  as  a  Euro- 
pean power,  but  to  a  repudiation  of  the  claims  of  the  Pa- 
pacy and  an  assertion  of  the  ecclesiastical  independence 
both  of  Church  and  Crown  which  paved  the  way  for  and 
gave  its  ultimate  form  to  the  English  Reformation.  The 
peculiar  shape  which  English  warfare  assumed,  the  tri- 
umph of  the  yeoman  and  archer  over  noble  and  knight, 
gave  new  force  to  the  political  advance  of  the  Commons. 
On  the  other  hand  the  misery  of  the  war  produced  the  first 
great  open  feud  between  labor  and  capital.  The  glory  of 
Cregy  or  Poitiers  was  dearly  bought  by  the  upgrowth  of 
English  pauperism.  The  warlike  temper  nursed  on  for- 
eign fields  begot  at  home  a  new  turbulence  and  scorn  of 
law,  woke  a  new  feudal  spirit  in  the  baronage,  and  sowed 
in  the  revolution  which  placed  a  new  house  on  the  throne 
the  seeds  of  that  fatal  strife  over  the  succession  which 
troubled  England  to  the  days  of  Elizabeth.  Nor  was  the 
contest  of  less  import  in  the  history  of  France.  If  it 
struck  her  for  the  moment  from  her  height  of  pride,  it  raised 
her  in  the  end  to  the  front  rank  among  the  states  of  Europe- 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  40? 

It  carried  her  boundaries  to  the  Ehone  and  the  Pyrenees. 
It  wrecked  alike  the  feudal  power  of  her  noblesse  and  the 
hopes  of  constitutional  liberty"  which  might  have  sprung 
from  the  emancipation  of  the  peasant  or  the  action  of  the 
burgh§r.  It  founded  a  roj-al  despotism  which  reached  its 
height  in  Richelieu  and  finally  plunged  France  into  the 
gulf  of  the  Revolution. 

Of  these  mighty  issues  little  could  be  foreseen  at  the 
moment  when  Philip  and  Edward  declared  war.  But 
from  the  very  first  the  war  took  European  dimensions. 
The  young  King  saw  clearly  the  greater  strength  of 
France.  The  weakness  of  the  Empire,  the  captivity  of 
the  Papacy  at  Avignon,  left  her  without  a  rival  am.ong 
European  powers.  The  French  chivalry  was  the  envy  of 
the  world,  and  its  military  fame  had  just  been  heightened 
by  a  victory  over  the  Flemish  communes  at  Cassel.  In 
numbers,  in  wealth,  the  French  people  far  surpassed  their 
neighbors  over  the  Channel.  England  can  hardly  have 
counted  more  than  four  millions  of  inhabitants,  France 
boasted  of  twenty.  The  clinging  of  our  kings  to  their 
foreign  dominions  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  their  sub- 
jects in  Gascony,  Aquitaine,  and  Poitou  must  have  equalled 
in  number  their  subjects  in  England.  There  was  the  same 
disproportion  in  the  wealth  of  the  two  countries  and,  as 
men  held  then,  in  their  military  resources.  Edward  could 
bring  only  eight  thousand  men-at-arms  to  the  field.  Philip, 
while  a  third  of  his  force  was  busy  elsewhere,  could  appear 
at  the  head  of  forty  thousand.  Of  the  revolution  in  war- 
fare which  was  to  reverse  this  superiority,  to  make  the 
footman  rather  than  the  horseman  the  strength  of  an  army, 
the  world  and  even  the  English  King,  in  spite  of  Falkirk 
and  Halidon,  as  yet  recked  little.  Edward's  whole  energy 
was  bent  on  meeting  the  strength  of  France  by  a  coalition 
of  powers  against  her,  and  his  plans  were  helped  by  the 
dread  which  the  great  feudatories  of  the  empire  who  lay 
nearest  to  him,  the  Duke  of  Brabant,  the  Counts  of  Hainault 
and  Gelders,  the  Markgrave  of  Juliers,  felt  of  French  iM 


408  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 


nexation.  They  listened  willingly  enough  to  his  offers. 
Sixty  thousand  crowns  purchased  the  alliance  of  Brabant. 
Lesser  subsidies  bought  that  of  the  two  counts  and  the 
Markgrave.  The  King's  work  was  helped  indeed  by  his 
domestic  relations.  The  Count  of  Hainault  was  Edward's 
father-in-law;  he  was  also  the  father-in-law  of  the  Count 
of  Gelders.  But  the  marriage  of  a  third  of  the  Count's^ 
daughters  brought  the  English  King  a  more  important 
ally.  She  was  wedded  to  the  Emperor  Lewis  of  Bavaria, 
and  the  connection  that  thus  existed  between  the  English 
and  Imperial  Courts  facilitated  the  negotiations  which 
ended  in  a  formal  alliance. 

But  the  league  had  a  more  solid  ground.  The  Emperor, 
like  Edward,  had  his  strife  with  France.  His  strife  sprang 
from  the  new  position  of  the  Papacy.  The  removal  of  the 
Popes  to  Avignon  which  followed  on  the  quarrel  of  Boni- 
face the  Eighth  with  Philip  le  Bel  and  the  subjection  to 
the  French  court  which  resulted  from  it  affected  the  whole 
state  of  European  politics.  In  the  ever-recurring  contest 
between  the  Papacy  and  the  Empire  France  had  of  old 
been  the  lieutenant  of  the  Roman  See.  But  with  the  set- 
tlement at  Avignon  the  relation  changed,  and  the  Pope 
became  the  lieutenant  of  France.  Instead  of  the  Papacy 
using  the  French  Kings  in  its  war  of  ideas  against  the 
Empire  the  French  Kings  used  the  Papacy  as  an  instru- 
ment in  their  political  rivalry  with  the  Emperors.  But  if 
the  position  of  the  Pope  drew  Lewis  to  the  side  of  Eng- 
land, it  had  much  to  do  with  drawing  Edward  to  the  side 
of  Lewis.  It  was  this  that  made  the  alliance,  fruitless  as 
it  proved  in  a  military  sense,  so  memorable  in  its  religious 
results.  Hitherto  England  had  been  mainly  on  the  side 
of  the  Popes  in  their  strife  against  the  Emperors.  Now 
that  the  Pope  had  become  a  tool  in  the  hands  of  a  power 
which  was  to  be  its  great  enemy,  the  country  was  driven 
to  close  alliances  with  the  Empire  and  to  an  ever-growing 
alienation  from  the  Roman  See.  In  Scotch  affairs  the 
hostility  of  the  Popes  had  been  steady  and  vexatious  ever 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  409 

since  Edward  the  First's  time,  and  from  the  moment  that 
this  fresh  struggle  commenced  they  again  showed  their 
French  partisanship.  When  Lewis  made  a  last  appeal 
for  peace,  Philip  of  Valois  made  Benedict  XII.  lay  down 
as  a  condition  that  the  Emperor  should  form  no  alliance 
with  an  enemy  of  France.  The  quarrel  of  both  England 
and  Germany  with  the  Papacy  at  once  grew  ripe.  The 
German  Diet  met  to  declare  that  the  Imperial  power  came 
from  God  alone,  and  that  the  choice  of  an  Emperor  needed 
no  Papal  confirmation,  while  Benedict  replied  by  a  formal 
excommunication  of  Lewis.  England,  on  the  other  hand, 
entered  on  a  religious  revolution  when  she  stood  hand  in 
band  with  an  excommunicated  power.  It  was  significant 
that  though  worship  ceased  in  Flanders  on  the  Pope's  in- 
terdict, the  English  priests  who  were  brought  over  set  the 
interdict  at  naught. 

The  negotiation  of  this  alliance  occupied  the  whole  of 
1337 ;  it  ended  in  a  promise  of  the  Emperor  on  payment  of 
3,000  gold  florins  to  furnish  two  thousand  men-at-arms. 
In  the  opening  of  1338  an  attack  of  Philip  on  the  Agenois 
forced  Edward  into  open  war.  His  profuse  expenditure, 
however,  brought  little  fruit.  Though  Edward  crossed  to 
Antwerp  in  the  summer,  the  year  was  spent  in  negotia- 
tions with  the  princes  of  the  Lower  Rhine  and  in  an  inter- 
view with  the  Emperor  at  Coblentz,  where  Lewis  appointed 
him  Vicar-Genoral  of  the  Emperor  for  all  territories  on  the 
left  bank  of  the  Rhine.  The  occupation  of  Cambray,  an 
Imperial  fief,  by  the  French  King  gave  a  formal  ground 
for  calling  the  princes  of  this  district  to  Edward's  stan- 
dard. But  already  the  great  alliance  showed  signs  of 
yielding.  Edward,  uneasy  at  his  connection  with  an  Em- 
peror under  the  ban  of  the  Church  and  harassed  by  vehe- 
ment remonstrances  from  the  Pope,  entered  again  into 
negotiations  with  France  in  the  winter  of  1338;  and  Lewis, 
alarmed  in  his  turn,  listened  to  fresh  overtures  from  Bene- 
dict, who  held  out  vague  hopes  of  reconciliation  while  he 
threatened  a  renewed  excommunication  if  Lewis  persisted 


410  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


iu  invading  France.  The  non-arrival  of  the  English  sub- 
sidy decided  the  Emperor  to  take  no  personal  part  in  the 
war,  and  the  attitude  of  Lewis  told  on  the  temper  of  Ed- 
ward's German  allies.  Though  all  joined  him  in  the 
summer  of  1339  on  his  formal  summons  of  them  as  Vicar- 
General  of  the  Empire,  and  his  army  when  it  appeared 
before  Cambray  numbered  forty  thousand  men,  their  ardor 
cooled  as  the  town  held  out.  Philip  approached  it  from 
the  south,  and  on  Edward's  announcing  his  resolve  to 
cross  the  river  and  attack  him  he  was  at  once  deserted  by 
the  two  border  princes  who  had  most  to  lose  from  a  con- 
test with  France,  the  Counts  of  Hainault  and  Namur. 
But  the  King  was  still  full  of  hope.  He  pushed  forward 
to  the  country  round  St,  Quentin  between  the  head  waters 
of  the  Somme  and  the  Oise  with  the  purpose  of  forcing  a 
decisive  engagement.  But  he  "found  Philip  strongly  en- 
camped, and  declaring  their  supplies  exhausted  his  allies 
at  once  called  for  a  retreat.  It  was  in  vain  that  Edward 
moved  slowly  for  a  week  along  the  French  border.  Philip's 
position  was  too  strongly  guarded  by  marshes  and  en- 
trenchments to  be  attacked,  and  at  last  the  allies  would 
stay  no  longer.  At  the  news  that  the  French  King  had 
withdrawn  to  the  south  the  whole  army  in  turn  fell  back 
upon  Brussels. 

The  failure  of  the  campaign  dispelled  the  hopes  which 
Edward  had  drawn  from  his  alliance  with  the  Empire. 
With  the  exhaustion  of  his  subsidies  the  princes  of  the 
Low  Countries  became  inactive.  The  Duke  of  Brabant 
became  cooler  in  his  friendship.  The  Emperor  himself, 
still  looking  to  an  accommodation  with  the  Pope  and  justly 
jealous  of  Edward's  own  intrigues  at  Avignon,  wavered 
and  at  last  fell  awaj".  But  though  the  alliance  ended  in 
disappointment  it  had  given  a  new  impulse  to  the  grudge 
against  the  Papacy  which  began  with  its  extortions  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  the  Third.  The  hold  of  Rome  on  the  loy- 
alty of  England  was  sensibly  weakening.  Their  transfer 
from  the  Eternal  City  to  Avignon  robbed  the  Popes  of  half 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  4H 

the  awe  which  they  had  inspired  among  Englishmen. 
Not  only  did  it  bring  them  nearer  and  more  into  the  light 
of  common  day,  but  it  dwarfed  them  into  mere  agents  of 
French  policy.  The  old  bitterness  at  their  exactions  was 
revived  by  the  greed  to  which  they  were  driven  through 
their  costly  efforts  to  impose  a  French  and  Papal  Emperor 
on  Germany  as  well  as  to  secure  themselves  in  their  new 
capital  on  the  Rhone.  The  mighty  building,  half  for- 
tress, half  palace,  which  still  awes  the  traveller  at  Avignon 
has  played  its  part  in  our  history.  Its  erection  was  to  the 
rise  of  Lollardry  what  the  erection  of  St.  Peter's  was  to  the 
rise  of  Lutheranism.  Its  massive  walls,  its  stately  chapel, 
its  chambers  glowing  with  the  frescoes  of  Simone  Memmi, 
the  garden  which  covered  its  roof  with  a  strange  verdure, 
called  year  by  year  for  fresh  supplies  of  gold ;  and  for  this 
as  for  the  wider  and  costlier  schemes  of  Papal  policy  gold 
could  be  got  only  by  pressing  harder  and  harder  on  the 
national  churches  the  worst  claims  of  the  Papal  court,  by 
demands  of  first-fruits  and  annates  from  rectory  and  bish- 
opric, by  pretensions  to  the  right  of  bestowing  all  bene- 
fices which  were  in  ecclesiastical  patronage  and  by  the  sale 
of  these  presentations,  by  the  direct  taxation  of  the  clergy, 
by  the  intrusion  of  foreign  priests  into  English  livings,  by 
opening  a  mart  for  the  disposal  of  pardons,  dispensations, 
and  indulgences,  and  by  encouraging  appeals  from  every 
ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  to  the  Papal  court.  No  griev- 
ance was  more  bitterly  felt  than  this  grievance  of  appeals. 
Cases  of  the  most  trifling  importance  were  called  for  de- 
cision out  of  the  realm  to  a  tribunal  whose  delays  were 
proverbial  and  whose  fees  were  enormous.  The  envoy  of 
an  Oxford  College  which  sought  only  a  formal  license  to 
turn  a  vicarage  into  a  rectory  had  not  only  to  bear  the  ex- 
pense and  toil  of  a  journey  which  then  occupied  some 
eighteen  days,  but  was  kept  dangling  at  Avignon  for  three- 
and-twentj'  weeks.  Humiliating  and  vexatious,  however, 
as  these  appeals  were,  they  were  but  one  among  the  means 
of  extortion  which  the  Papal  court  multiplied  as  its  needs 


412  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

grew  greater.  The  protest  of  a  later  Parliament,  exag- 
gerated as  its  statements  no  doubt  are,  shows  the  extent 
of  the  national  irritation,  if  not  of  the  grievances  which 
produced  it.  It  asserted  that  the  taxes  levied  by  the  Pope 
amounted  to  five  times  the  amount  of  those  levied  by  the 
king ;  that  by  reservations  during  the  life  of  actual  holders 
the  Pope  disposed  of  the  same  bishopric  four  or  five  times 
over,  receiving  each  time  the  first-fruits.  "The  brokers 
of  the  sinful  city  of  Rome  promote  for  money  unlearned 
and  unworthy  caitiffs  to  benefices  to  the  value  of  a  thou- 
sand marks,  while  the  poor  and  learned  hardly  obtain  one 
of  twenty.  So  decays  sound  learning.  They  present  aliens 
who  neither  see  nor  care  to  see  their  parishioners,  despise 
God's  services,  convey  away  the  treasure  of  the  realm, 
and  are  worse  than  Jews  or  Saracens.  The  Pope's  rev- 
enue from  England  alone  is  larger  than  that  of  any  prince 
in  Christendom.  God  gave  his  sheep  to  be  pastured,  not 
to  be  shaven  and  shorn."  At  the  close  of  this  reign  in- 
deed the  deaneries  of  Lichfield,  Salisbury,  and  York,  the 
archdeaconry  of  Canterbury,  which  was  reputed  the 
wealthiest  English  benefice,  together  with  a  host  of  pre- 
bends and  preferments,  were  held  by  Italian  cardinals  and 
priests,  while  the  Pope's  collector  from  his  office  in  London 
sent  twenty  thousand  marks  a  year  to  the  Papal  treasury. 
But  the  greed  of  the  Popes  was  no  new  grievance, 
though  the  increase  of  these  exactions  since  the  removal  to 
Avignon  gave  it  a  new  force.  What  alienated  England 
most  was  their  connection  with  and  dependence  on  France. 
From  the  first  outset  of  the  troubles  in  the  North  their 
attitude  had  been  one  of  hostility  to  the  English  projects. 
France  was  too  useful  a  supporter  of  the  Papal  court  to 
find  much  difficulty  in  inducing  it  to  aid  in  hampering 
the  growth  of  English  greatness.  Boniface  the  Eighth 
released  Balliol  from  his  oath  of  fealty,  and  forbade  Ed- 
ward to  attack  Scotland  on  the  ground  that  it  was  a  fief  of 
the  Roman  see.  His  intervention  was  met  by  a  solemn 
and  emphatic  protest  from  the  English  Parliament;  bul 


Chap.  3.  J  THE  PARLIAMENT,     1307—1461.  413 

it  none  the  less  formed  a  terrible  obstacle  in  Edward's 
way.  The  obstacle  was  at  last  removed  by  the  quarrel  of 
Boniface  with  Philip  the  Fair ;  but  the  end  of  this  quarrel 
only  threw  the  Papacy  more  completely  into  the  hands  of 
France.  Though  Avignon  remained  imperial  soil,  the 
removal  of  the  Popes  to  this  city  on  the  verge  of  their 
dominions  made  them  mere  tools  of  the  French  Kings. 
Much  no  doubt  of  the  endless  negotiation  which  the  Papal 
court  carried  on  with  Edward  the  Third  in  his  strife  with 
Philip  of  Valois  was  an  honest  struggle  for  peace.  But 
to  England  it  seemed  the  mere  interference  of  a  dependent 
on  behalf  of  "  our  enemy  of  France. "  The  people  scorned 
a  "French  Pope,"  and  threatened  Papal  legates  with  ston- 
ing when  they  landed  on  English  shores.  The  alliance  of 
Edward  with  an  excommunicated  Emperor,  the  bold  de 
fiance  with  which  English  priests  said  mass  in  Flanders 
when  an  interdict  reduced  the  Flemish  priests  to  silence, 
were  significant  tokens  of  the  new  attitude  which  England 
was  taking  up  in  the  face  of  Popes  who  were  leagued  with 
its  enemy.  The  old  quarrel  over  ecclesiastical  wrongs  was 
renewed  in  a  formal  and  decisive  way.  In  1343  the  Com- 
mons petitioned  for  the  redress  of  the  grievance  of  Papal 
appointments  to  vacant  livings  in  despite  of  the  rights  of 
patrons  or  the  Crown ;  and  Edward  formally  complained 
to  the  Pope  of  his  appointing  "  foreigners,  most  of  them 
suspicious  persons,  who  do  not  reside  on  their  benefices, 
who  do  not  know  the  faces  of  the  flocks  intrusted  to  them, 
who  do  not  understand  their  language,  but,  neglecting  the 
cure  of  souls,  seek  as  hirelings  only  their  worldly  hire." 
In  yet  sharper  words  the  King  rebuked  the  Papal  greed. 
"The  successor  of  the  Apostles  was  set  over  the  Lord's 
sheep  to  feed  and  not  to  shear  them."  The  Parliament  de- 
clared "that  they  neither  could  nor  would  tolerate  such 
things  any  longer;"  and  the  general  irritation  moved 
slowly  toward  those  statutes  of  Provisors  and  Praemunire 
which  heralded  the  policy  of  Henry  the  Eighth. 

But  for  the  moment  the  strife  with  the  Papacy  was  set 


414  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


aside  in  the  efforts  which  were  needed  for  a  new  struggle 
with  France,  The  campaign  of  1339  had  not  only  ended 
in  failure,  it  had  dispelled  the  trust  of  Edward  in  an  Im- 
perial alliance.  But  as  this  hope  faded  away  a  fresh  hope 
dawned  on  the  King  from  another  quarter.  Flanders, 
still  bleeding  from  the  defeat  of  its  burghers  by  the  French 
knighthood,  was  his  natural  ally.  England  was  the  great 
wool-producing  country  of  the  west,  but  few  woollen  fabrics 
were  woven  in  England.  The  number  of  weavers'  guilds 
shows  that  the  trade  was  gradually  extending,  and  at  the 
very  outset  of  his  reign  Edward  had  taken  steps  for  its 
encouragement.  He  invited  Flemish  weavers  to  settle  in 
his  countrj^,  and  took  the  new  immigrants,  who  chose  the 
eastern  counties  for  the  seat  of  their  trade,  under  his  royal 
protection.  But  English  manufactures  were  still  in  their 
infancy  and  nine-tenths  o^  the  English  wool  went  to  the 
looms  of  Bruges  or  of  Ghent.  We  may  see  the  rapid 
growth  of  this  export  trade  in  the  fact  that  the  King  re- 
ceived in  a  single  year  more  than  £30,000  from  duties 
levied  on  wool  alone.  The  wool-sack  which  forms  the 
Chancellor's  seat  in  the  House  of  Lords  is  said  to  witness 
to  the  importance  which  the  government  attached  to  this 
new  source  of  wealth.  A  stoppage  of  this  export  threw 
half  the  population  of  the  great  Flemish  towns  out  of 
work,  and  the  irritation  caused  in  Flanders  by  the  inter- 
ruption which  this  trade  sustained  through  the  piracies 
that  Philip's  ships  were  carrying  on  in  the  Channel  showed 
how  effective  the  threat  of  such  a  stoppage  would  be  in 
securing  their  alliance.  Nor  was  this  the  only  ground  for 
hoping  for  aid  from  the  Flemish  towns.  Their  democratic 
spirit  jostled  roughly  with  the  feudalism  of  France.  If 
their  counts  clung  to  the  French  monarchy,  the  towns 
themselves,  proud  of  their  immense  population,  their 
thriving  industry,  their  vast  wealth,  drew  more  and 
more  to  independence.  Jacques  van  Arteveldt,  a  great 
brewer  of  Ghent,  wielded  the  chief  influence  in  their 
councils,  and   his  aim  was  to  build  up  a   confederacy 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  415 

which  might  hold  France  in  check  along  her  northern 
border. 

His  plans  had  as  yet  brought  no  help  from  the  Flemish 
towns,  but  at  the  close  of  1339  they  set  aside  their  neu- 
trality for  open  aid.  The  great  plan  of  Federation  which 
Van  Arteveldt  had  been  devising  as  a  check  on  the  ag- 
gression of  France  was  carried  out  in  a  treaty  concluded 
between  Edward,  the  Duke  of  Brabant,  the  cities  of  Brus- 
sels, Antwerp,  Louvaiu,  Ghent,  Bruges,  Ypres,  and  seven 
others.  By  this  remarkable  treaty  it  was  provided  that 
war  should  be  begun  and  ended  only  by  mutual  consent, 
free  commerce  be  encouraged  between  Flanders  and  Bra- 
bant, and  no  change  made  in  their  commercial  arrange- 
ments save  with  the  consent  of  the  whole  league.  By  a 
subsequent  treaty  the  Flemish  towns  owned  Edward  as 
King  of  France,  and  declared  war  against  Philip  of  Valois. 
But  their  voice  was  decisive  on  the  course  of  the  campaign 
which  opened  in  1340.  As  Philip  held  the  Upper  Scheldt 
by  the  occupation  of  Cambraj^,  so  he  held  the  Lower 
Scheldt  by  that  of  Tournay,  a  fortress  which  broke  the 
line  of  commerce  between  Flanders  and  Brabant.  It  was 
a  condition  of  the  Flemish  alliance,  therefore,  that  the  war 
should  open  with  the  capture  of  Tournay.  It  was  only  at 
the  cost  of  a  fight,  however,  that  Edward  could  now  cross 
the  Channel  to  undertake  the  siege.  France  was  as  su- 
perior in  force  at  sea  as  on  land ;  and  a  fleet  of  two  hun- 
dred vessels  gathered  at  Sluys  to  intercept  him.  But  the 
fine  seamanship  of  the  English  sailors  justified  the  courage 
of  their  King  in  attacking  this  fleet  with  far  smaller 
forces;  the  French  ships  were  utterly  destroyed  and 
twenty  thousand  Frenchmen  slain  in  the  encounter.  It 
was  with  the  lustre  of  this  great  victory  about  him  that 
Edward  marched  upon  Tourna3^  Its  siege,  however, 
proved  as  fruitless  as  that  of  Cambray  in  the  preceding 
year,  and  after  two  montlis  of  investment  his  vast  army  of 
one  hundred  thousand  men  broke  up  without  either  captur- 
ing the  town  or  bringing  Philip  when  he  approached  it  to  an 


416  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

engagement.  Want  of  money  forced  Edward  to  a  truce  for  a 
year,  and  be  returned  beggared  and  embittered  to  England. 
He  bad  been  worsted  in  war  as  in  diplomacy.  One 
naval  victory  alone  redeemed  years  of  failure  and  expense. 
Guienne  was  all  but  lost,  England  was  suffering  from  tbe 
terrible  taxation,  from  the  ruin  of  commerce,  from  the 
ravages  of  her  coast.  Five  years  of  constant  reverses  were 
hard  blows  for  a  King  of  twenty-eight  who  had  been  glori- 
ous and  successful  at  twenty-three.  His  financial  diffi- 
culties indeed  were  enormous.  It  was  in  vain  that,  avail- 
ing himself  of  an  Act  which  forbade  the  exportation  of 
wool  "till  by  the  King  and  his  Council  it  is  otherwise 
provided,"  he  turned  for  the  time  the  wool-trade  into  a 
royal  monopoly  and  became  the  sole  wool  exporter,  buying 
at  <£3  and  selling  at  £20  the  sack.  The  campaign  of  1339 
brought  with  it  a  crushing  debt:  that  of  13-40  proved  yet 
more  costly.  Edward  attributed  his  failure  to  the  slack- 
ness of  his  ministers  in  sending  money  and  supplies,  and 
this  to  their  silent  opposition  to  the  war.  But  wroth  as 
he  was  on  his  return,  a  short  struggle  between  the  ministers 
and  the  King  ended  in  a  reconciliation,  and  preparations 
for  renewed  hostilities  went  on.  Abroad  indeed  nothing 
could  be  done.  The  Emperor  finally  withdrew  from  Ed- 
ward's friendship.  A  new  Pope,  Clement  the  Sixth,  proved 
even  more  French  in  sentiment  than  his  predecessor. 
Flanders  alone  held  true  of  all  England's  foreign  allies. 
Edward  was  powerless  to  attack  Philip  in  the  realm  he 
claimed  for  his  own ;  what  strength  he  could  gather  was 
needed  to  prevent  the  utter  ruin  of  the  English  cause  in 
Scotland  on  the  return  of  David  Bruce.  Edward's  soldiers 
had  been  driven  from  the  open  country  and  confined  to  the 
fortresses  of  the  Lowlands.  Even  these  were  at  last  reft 
away.  Perth  was  taken  by  siege,  and  the  King  was  too 
late  to  prevent  the  surrender  of  Stirling.  Edinburgh  was 
captured  by  a  stratagem.  Only  Roxburgh  and  Berwick 
were  saved  by  a  truce  which  Edward  was  driven  to  con- 
elude  with  the  Scots. 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  417 

But  with  the  diflSculties  of  the  Crown  the  weight  of 
the  two  Houses  made  itself  more  and  more  sensibly  felt. 
The  almost  incessant  warfare  which  had  gone  on  since  the 
accession  of  Edward  the  Third  consolidated  and  developed 
the  power  which  they  had  gained  from  the  dissensions  of 
his  father's  reign.  The  need  of  continual  grants  brought 
about  an  assembly  of  Parliament  year  by  year,  and  the 
subsidies  that  were  accorded  to  the  King  showed  the  po- 
tency of  the  financial  engine  which  the  Crown  could  now 
bring  into  play.  In  a  single  year  the  Parliament  granted 
twenty  thousand  sacks,  or  half  the  wool  of  the  realm. 
Two  years  later  the  Commons  voted  an  aid  of  thirty  thou- 
sand sacks.  In  1339  the  barons  granted  the  tenth  sheep 
and  fleece  and  Iamb.  The  clergy  granted  two-tenths  in 
one  year,  and  a  tenth  for  three  years  in  the  next.  But 
with  each  suppl}^  some  step  was  made  to  greater  political 
influence.  In  his  earlier  vears  Edward  showed  no  jealousy 
of  the  Parliament.  His  policy  was  to  make  the  struggle 
with  France  a  national  one  by  winning  for  it  the  sympa- 
thy of  the  people  at  large  ;  and  with  this  view  he  not  only 
published  in  the  County  Courts  the  efforts  he  had  made 
for  peace,  but  appealed  again  and  again  for  the  sanctiou 
and  advice  of  Parliament  in  his  enterprise.  In  1331  he 
asked  the  Estates  whether  they  would  prefer  negotiation 
or  war :  in  1338  he  declared  that  his  expedition  to  Flanders 
was  made  by  the  assent  of  the  Lords  and  at  the  prayer  of 
the  Commons.  The  part  of  the  last  in  public  affairs  grew 
greater  in  spite  of  their  own  efforts  to  remain  obscure. 
From  the  opening  of  the  reign  a  crowd  of  enactments  for 
the  regulation  of  trade,  whether  wise  or  unwise,  shows  the 
influence  of  the  burgesses.  But  the  final  division  of  Par- 
liament into  two  Houses,  a  change  which  was  completed 
by  1341,  necessarily  increased  the  weight  of  the  Commons 
The  humble  trader  who  shrank  from  counselling  the  Crowfl 
in  great  matters  of  policy  gathered  courage  as  he  found 
himself  sitting  side  by  side  with  the  knights  of  the  shire. 
It  was  at  the  moment  when  this  great  change  was  being 
Voj^  I.— 27 


il8  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

brought  about  that  the  disasters  of  the  war  spurred  the 
Parliament  to  greater  activity.  The  enormous  grants  of 
1340  were  bought  by  the  King's  assent  to  statutes  which 
provided  remedies  for  grievances  of  which  the  Commons 
complained.  The  most  important  of  these  put  an  end  to 
the  attempts  which  Edward  had  made  like  his  grandfather 
to  deal  with  the  merchant  class  apart  from  the  Houses. 
No  charge  or  aid  was  henceforth  to  be  made  save  by  the 
common  assent  of  the  Estates  assembled  in  Parliament. 
The  progress  of  the  next  year  was  yet  more  important. 
The  strife  of  the  King  with  his  ministers,  the  foremost  of 
whom  was  Archbishop  Stratford,  ended  in  the  Primate's 
refusal  to  make  answer  to  the  royal  charges  save  in  full 
Parliament,  and  in  the  assent  of  the*  King  to  a  resolution 
of  the  Lords  that  none  of  their  nmnber,  whether  ministers 
of  the  Crown  or  no,  should  be  brought  to  trial  elsewhere 
than  before  his  peers.  The  Commons  demanded  and  ob- 
tained the  appointment  of  commissioners  elected  in  Par- 
liament to  audit  the  grants  already  made.  Finally  it  was 
enacted  that  at  each  Parliament  the  ministers  should  hold 
themselves  accountable  for  all  grievances;  that  on  any 
vacancy  the  King  should  take  counsel  with  his  lords  as  to 
the  choice  of  the  new  minister;  and  that,  when  chosen, 
each  minister  should  be  sworn  in  Parliament. 

At  the  moment  which  we  have  reached  therefore  the 
position  of  the  Parliament  had  become  far  more  important 
than  at  Edward's  accession.  Its  form  was  settled.  The 
third  estate  had  gained  a  fuller  parliamentary  power.  The 
principle  of  ministerial  responsibility  to  the  Houses  had 
been  established  by  formal  statute.  But  the  jealousy  of 
Edward  was  at  last  completely  roused,  and  from  this  mo- 
ment he  looked  on  the  new  power  as  a  rival  to  his  own. 
The  Parliament  of  1341  had  no  sooner  broken  up  than  he 
revoked  by  Letters  Patent  the  statutes  it  had  passed  as 
done  in  prejudice  of  his  prerogative  and  only  assented  to 
for  the  time  to  prevent  worse  confusion.  The  regular  as- 
sembly of  the  Estates  was  suddenly  interrupted,  and  two 


Chap.  S.J  THE  PARLIAMENT.    1307—1461.  419 

years  passed  without  a  Parliament.  It  was  only  the  con« 
tinual  presence  of  war  which  from  this  time  drove  Edward 
to  summon  the  Houses  at  all.  Though  the  truce  still  held 
good  between  England  and  France  a  quarrel  of  succession 
to  the  Duchy  of  Brittany  which  broke  out  in  1341  and 
called  Philip  to  the  support  of  one  claimant,  his  cousin 
Charles  of  Blois,  and  Edward  to  the  support  of  a  rival 
claimant,  John  of  Montfort,  dragged  on  year  after  year. 
In  Flanders  things  went  ill  for  the  English  cause.  The 
dissensions  between  the  great  and  the  smaller  towns,  and 
in  the  greater  towns  themselves  between  the  weavers  and 
fullers,  dissensions  which  had  taxed  the  genius  of  Van 
Arteveldt  through  the  nine  years  of  his  wonderful  rule, 
broke  out  in  1345  into  a  revolt  at  Ghent  in  which  the  great 
statesman  was  slain.  With  him  fell  a  design  for  the  de- 
position of  the  Count  of  Flanders  and  the  reception  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  in  his  stead  which  he  was  ardently  press- 
ing, and  whose  political  results  might  have  been  immense. 
Deputies  were  at  once  sent  to  England  to  excuse  Van  Ar- 
teveldt's  murder  and  to  promise  loyalty  to  Edward ;  but  the 
King's  difficulties  had  now  reached  their  height.  His 
loans  from  the  Florentine  bankers  amounted  to  half  a 
million.  His  claim  on  the  French  crown  found  not  a  sin- 
gle adherent  save  among  the  burghers  of  the  Flemish 
towns.  The  overtures  which  he  made  for  peace  were  con- 
temptuously rejected,  and  the  expiration  of  the  truce  in 
1345  found  him  again  face  to  face  with  France. 

But  it  was  perhaps  this  breakdown  of  all  foreign  hope 
that  contributed  to  Edward's  success  in  the  fresh  outbreak 
of  war.  The  war  opened  in  Guienne,  and  Henry  of  Lan- 
caster, who  was  now  known  as  the  Earl  of  Derby,  and 
who  with  the  Hainaulter  Sir  Walter  Maunay  took  the 
command  in  that  quarter,  at  once  showed  the  abilities  of 
a  great  general.  The  course  of  the  Garonne  was  cleared 
by  his  capture  of  La  Reole  and  Aiguillon,  that  of  the 
Dordogne  by  the  reduction  of  Bergerac,  and  a  way  opened 
for  the  reconquest  of  Poitou  by  the  capture  of  Angoulem©. 


420  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

These  unexpected  successes  roused  Philip  to  strenuous 
efforts,  and  a  hundred  thousand  men  gathered  under  his 
son,  John,  Duke  of  Normandy,  for  the  subjugation  of  the 
South.  Angouleme  was  won  back,  and  Aiguillon  be- 
sieged when  Edward  sailed  to  the  aid  of  his  hard-pressed 
lieutenant.  It  was  with  an  army  of  thirty  thousand  men, 
half  English,  half  Irish  and  "Welsh,  that  he  commenced  a 
march  which  was  to  change  the  whole  face  of  the  war. 
His  aim  was  simple.  Flanders  was  still  true  to  Edward's 
cause,  and  while  Derby  was  pressing  on  in  the  south  a 
Flemish  army  besieged  Bouvines  and  threatened  France 
from  the  north.  The  King  had  at  first  proposed  to  land 
in  Guienne  and  relieve  the  forces  in  the  south ;  but  sud- 
denly changing  his  design  he  disembarked  at  La  Hogue 
and  advanced  through  Normand3\  By  this  skilful  move- 
ment Edward  not  only  relieved  Derby  but  threatened  Paris, 
and  left  himself  able  to  co-operate  with  either  his  own 
army  in  the  south  or  the  Flemings  in  the  north.  Nor- 
mandy was  totally  without  defence,  and  after  the  sack  of 
Caen,  which  was  then  one  of  the  wealthiest  towns  in 
France,  Edward  marched  upon  the  Seine.  His  march 
threatened  Rouen  and  Paris,  and  its  strategical  value  was 
seen  by  the  sudden  panic  of  the  French  King.  Philip  was 
wholly  taken  by  surprise.  He  attempted  to  arrest  Ed- 
ward's march  by  an  offer  to  restore  the  Duchy  of  Aquitaine 
as  Edward  the  Second  had  held  it,  but  the  offer  was  fruit- 
less. Philip  was  forced  to  call  his  son  to  the  rescue.  John 
at  once  raised  the  siege  of  Aiguillon,  and  the  French  army 
moved  rapidly  to  the  north,  its  withdrawal  enabling  Derby 
to  capture  Poitiers  and  make  himself  thorough  master  of 
the  south.  But  John  was  too  distant  from  Paris  for  his 
forces  to  avail  Philip  in  his  emergency,  for  Edward,  find- 
ing the  bridges  on  the  Lower  Seine  broken,  pushed  straight 
on  Paris,  rebuilt  the  bridge  of  Poissy,  and  threatened  the 
capital. 

At  this  crisis  however  France  found  an  unexpected  help 
in  a  hodv  of  O^erman  knights.     The  long  strife  between 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  421 

Lewis  of  Bavaria  and  the  Papacy  had  ended  at  last  in 
Clement's  carrying  out  his  sentence  of  deposition  by  the 
nomination  and  coronation  as  emperor  of  Charles  of  Lux- 
emburg, a  son  of  King  John  of  Bohemia,  the  well  known 
Charles  IV.  of  the  Golden  Bull.  But  against  this  Papal 
assumption  of  a  right  to  bestow  the  German  Crown  Ger- 
many rose  as  one  man.  Not  a  town  opened  its  gates  to 
the  Papal  claimant,  and  driven  to  seek  help  and  refuge 
from  Philip  of  Valois  he  found  himself  at  this  moment  on 
the  eastern  frontier  of  France  •with  his  father  and  500 
knights.  Hurrying  to  Paris  this  German  force  formed 
the  nucleus  of  an  army  which  assembled  at  St.  Denys; 
and  which  was  soon  reinforced  by  15,000  Genoese  cross- 
bowmen  who  had  been  hired  from  among  the  soldiers  of 
the  Lord  of  Monaco  on  the  sunny  Riviera  and  arrived  at 
this  hour  of  need.  With  this  host  rapidly  gathering  in 
his  front  Edward  abandoned  his  march  on  Paris,  which 
had  already  served  its  purpose  in  relieving  Derby,  and 
threw  himself  across  the  Seine  to  carry  out  the  second  part 
of  his  programme  by  a  junction  with  the  Flemings  at 
Gravelines  and  a  campaign  in  the  north.  But  the  rivers 
in  his  path  were  carefully  guarded,  and  it  was  only  by 
surprising  the  ford  of  Blanche- Taque  on  the  Somme  that 
the  King  escaped  the  necessity  of  surrendering  to  the  vast 
host  which  was  now  hastening  in  pursuit.  His  communi- 
cations however  were  no  sooner  secured  than  he  halted  on 
the  twenty-sixth  of  August  at  the  little  village  of  Cregy  in 
Ponthieu  and  resolved  to  give  battle.  Half  of  his  army, 
which  had  been  greatly  reduced  in  strength  by  his  rapid 
marches,  consisted  of  light-armed  footmen  from  Ireland 
and  Wales;  the  bulk  of  the  remainder  was  composed  of 
English  bowmen.  The  King  ordered  his  men-at-arms  to 
dismount,  and  drew  up  his  forces  on  a  low  rise  sloping 
gently  to  the  southeast,  with  a  deep  ditch  covering  its 
front,  and  its  flanks  protected  by  woods  and  a  little  brook. 
From  a  windmill  on  the  summit  of  this  rise  Edward  could 
overlook  the  whole  field  of  battle.     Immediately  beneath 


422  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 


him  lay  his  reserve,  while  at  the  base  of  the  slope  was 
placed  the  main  body  of  the  army  in  two  divisions,  that 
to  the  right  commanded  by  the  young  Prince  of  Wales, 
Edward  "the  Black  Prince,"  as  he  was  called,  that  to  the 
left  by  the  Earl  of  Northampton.  A  small  ditch  protected 
the  English  front,  and  behind  it  the  bowmen  were  drawn 
up  "  in  the  form  of  a  harrow"  with  small  bombards  be- 
tween them  "  which  with  fire  threw  little  iron  balls  to 
frighten  the  horses,"  the  first  instance  known  of  the  use  of 
artillery  in  field-warfare. 

The  halt  of  the  English  army  took  Philip  by  surprise, 
and  he  attempted  for  a  time  to  check  the  advance  of  his 
army.  But  the  attempt  was  fruitless  and  the  disorderly 
host  rolled  on  to  the  English  front.  The  sight  of  his  ene- 
mies indeed  stirred  Philip's  own  blood  to  fury,  "for  he 
hated  them."  The  fight  began  at  vespers.  The  Genoese 
cross-bowmen  were  ordered  to  open  the  attack,  but  the 
men  were  weary  with  their  march,  a  sudden  storm  wetted 
and  rendered  useless  their  bowstrings,  and  the  loud  shouts 
with  which  they  leaped  forward  to  the  encounter  were  met 
with  dogged  silence  in  the  English  ranks.  Their  first 
arrow  flight  however  brought  a  terrible  reply.  So  rapid 
was  the  English  shot  "that  it  seemed  as  if  it  snowed." 
"  Kill  me  these  scoundrels,"  shouted  Philip,  as  the  Genoese 
fell  back;  and  his  men-at-arms  plunged  butchering  into 
their  broken  ranks  while  the  Counts  of  Alengon  and  Flan- 
ders at  the  head  of  the  French  knighthood  fell  hotly  on  the 
Prince's  line.  For  an  instant  his  small  force  seemed  lost, 
and  he  called  his  father  to  support  him.  But  Edward  re- 
fused to  send  him  aid.  "  Is  he  dead,  or  unhorsed,  or  so 
wounded  that  he  cannot  help  himself?"  he  asked  the  en- 
voy. "  No,  sir,"  was  the  reply,  "  but  he  is  in  a  hard  pas- 
sage of  arms,  and  sorely  needs  your  help."  "Return  to 
those  that  sent  you,"  said  the  King,  "and  bid  them  not 
send  to  me  again  so  long  as  my  son  lives !  Let  the  boy 
win  his  spurs,  for,  if  God  so  order  it,  I  will  that  the  day 
may  be  his  and  that  the  honor  may  be  with  him  and  them 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  433 

■  ■        ■  — -—       I  1  -.1.1  I  I- —a^^m^m^mt^^^^^^^aa^^i^m^^^ 

to  whom  I  have  given  it  in  charge."  Edward  could  see 
in  fact  from  his  higher  ground  that  all  went  well.  The 
English  bowmen  and  men-at-arms  held  their  ground 
stoutly  while  the  Welshmen  stabbed  the  French  horses  in 
the  melee  and  brought  knight  after  knight  to  the  ground. 
Soon  the  French  host  was  wavering  in  a  fatal  confusion. 
"You  are  my  vassals,  my  friends,"  cried  the  blind  John 
of  Bohemia  to  the  German  nobles  around  him.  "  I  pray 
and  beseech  you  to  lead  me  so  far  into  the  fight  that  I  may 
strike  one  good  blow  with  this  sword  of  mine !"  Linking 
their  bridles  together,  the  little  company  plunged  into  the 
thick  of  the  combat  to  fall  as  their  fellows  were  falling. 
The  battle  went  steadily  against  the  French.  At  last 
Philip  himself  hurried  from  the  field,  and  the  defeat  be- 
came a  rout.  Twelve  hundred  knights  and  thirty  thousand 
footmen — a  number  equal  to  the  whole  English  force — lay 
dead  upon  the  ground. 

"  God  has  punished  us  for  our  sins,"  cries  the  chronicler 
of  St.  Denys  in  a  passion  of  bewildered  grief  as  he  tells 
the  rout  of  the  great  host  which  he  had  seen  mustering  be- 
neath his  abbey  walls.  But  the  fall  of  France  was  hardly 
so  sudden  or  so  incomprehensible  as  the  ruin  at  a  single 
blow  of  a  system  of  warfare,  and  with  it  of  the  political 
and  social  fabric  which  had  risen  out  of  that  system. 
Feudalism  rested  on  the  superiority  of  the  horseman  to  the 
footman,  of  the  mounted  noble  to  the  unmounted  churl. 
The  real  fighting  power  of  a  feudal  army  lay  in  its  knight- 
hood, in  the  baronage  and  landowners  who  took  the  field, 
each  with  his  group  of  esquires  and  mounted  men-at-arms. 
A  host  of  footmen  followed  them,  but  they  were  ill-armed, 
ill- disciplined,  and  seldom  called  on  to  play  any  decisive 
part  on  the  actual  battle-field.  In  France,  and  especially 
at  the  moment  we  have  reached,  the  contrast  between  the 
efficiency  of  these  two  elements  of  warfare  was  more  strik- 
ing than  elsewhere.  Nowhere  was  the  chivalry  so  splen- 
did, nowhere  was  the  general  misery  and  oppression  of  the 
poor  more  terribly  expressed  in  the  wortblessness  of  the 


424:  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV 

mob  of  footmen  who  were  driven  by  their  lords  to  the 
camp.  In  England,  on  the  other  hand,  the  failure  of  feud- 
alism to  win  a  complete  hold  on  the  country  was  seen  in 
the  persistence  of  the  older  national  institutions  which 
based  its  defence  on  the  general  levy  of  its  freemen.  If 
the  foreign  Kings  added  to  this  a  system  of  warlike  or- 
ganization grounded  on  the  service  due  from  its  military 
tenants  to  the  Crown,  they  were  far  from  regarding  this  as 
superseding  the  national  "fyrd."  The  Assize  of  Arms, 
the  Statute  of  Winchester,  show  with  what  care  the  fyrd 
was  held  in  a  state  of  efficiency.  Its  force  indeed  as  an 
engine  of  war  was  fast  rising  between  the  age  of  Henry 
the  Second  and  that  of  Edward  the  Third.  The  social 
changes  on  which  we  have  already  dwelt,  the  facilities  given 
to  alienation  and  the  subdivision  of  lands,  the  transition 
of  the  serf  into  a  copyholder  and  of  the  copyholder  by  re- 
demption of  his  services  into  a  freeholder,  the  rise  of  a 
new  class  of  "  farmers"  as  the  lords  ceased  to  till  their 
demesne  by  means  of  bailiffs  and  adopted  the  practice  of 
leasing  it  at  a  rent  or  "  farm"  to  one  of  the  customary  ten- 
ants, the  general  increase  of  wealth  which  was  telling  on 
the  social  position  even  of  those  who  still  remained  in  vil- 
leinage, undid  more  and  more  the  earlier  process  which 
had  degraded  the  free  ceorl  of  the  English  Conquest  into 
the  villein  of  the  IsTorman  Conquest,  and  covered  the  land 
with  a  population  of  yeomen,  some  freeholders,  some  with 
services  that  every  day  became  less  weighty  and  already 
left  them  virtually  free. 

Such  men,  proud  of  their  right  to  justice  and  an  equal 
law,  called  by  attendance  in  the  county  court  to  a  share 
in  the  judicial,  the  financial,  and  the  political  life  of  the 
realm,  were  of  a  temper  to  make  soldiers  of  a  different  sort 
from  the  wretched  serfs  who  followed  the  feudal  lords  of 
the  Continent;  and  they  were  equipped  with  a  weapon 
which  as  they  wielded  it  was  enough  of  itself  to  make  a 
revolution  in  the  art  of  war.  The  bow,  identified  as  it  be- 
came with  English  warfare,  was  the  weapon  not  of  Eng- 


C5RXV  t.]  THE  PAELIAMENT.     1307—1461.  425 

Iishn»»in  but  of  their  Norman  conquerors.  It  was  the  Nor- 
man urrow-flight  that  decided  the  day  of  Senlac.  But  in 
the  organization  of  the  national  army  it  had  been  assigned 
as  the  weapon  of  the  poorer  freeholders  who  were  liable  to 
serve  at  the  King's  summons ;  and  we  see  how  closely  it 
had  become  associated  with  them  in  the  picture  of  Chau- 
cer's yeoman.  "  In  his  hand  he  bore  a  mighty  bow."  Its 
might  lay  not  only  in  the  range  of  the  heavy  war-shaft,  a 
range  we  are  told  of  four  hundred  yards,  but  in  its  force. 
The  English  archer,  taught  from  very  childhood  "  how  to 
draw,  how  to  lay  his  body  to  the  bow,"  his  skill  quickened 
by  incessant  practice  and  constant  rivalrj^  with  his  fellows, 
raised  the  bow  into  a  terrible  engine  of  war.  Thrown  out 
along  the  front  in  a  loose  order  that  alone  showed  their 
vigor  and  self-dependence,  the  bowmen  faced  and  riddled 
the  splendid  line  of  knighthood  as  it  charged  upon  them. 
The  galled  horses  "reeled  right  rudely."  Their  riders 
found  even  the  steel  of  Milan  a  poor  defence  against  the 
gray-goose  shaft.  Gradually  the  bow  dictated  the  very 
tactics  of  an  English  battle.  If  the  mass  of  cavalry  still 
plunged  foi'ward,  the  screen  of  archers  broke  to  right  and 
left  and  the  men-at-arms  who  lay  in  reserve  behind  them 
made  short  work  of  the  broken  and  disordered  horsemen, 
while  the  light  troops  from  Wales  and  Ireland  flinging 
themselves  into  the  melee  with  their  long  knives  and  darts 
brought  steed  after  steed  to  the  ground.  It  was  this  new 
military  engine  that  Edward  the  Third  carried  to  the  fields 
of  France.  His  armies  were  practically  bodies  of  hired 
soldiery,  for  the  short  period  of  feudal  service  was  insuffi- 
cient for  foreign  campaigns,  and  yeoman  and  baron  were 
alike  drawn  by  a  high  rate  of  pay.  An  archer's  daily 
wages  equalled  some  five  shillings  of  our  present  money. 
Such  payment  when  coupled  with  the  hope  of  plunder  was 
enough  to  draw  yeomen  from  thorpe  and  farm ;  and  though 
the  royal  treasury  was  drained  as  it  had  never  been  drained 
before  the  English  King  saw  himself  after  the  day  of  Cregy 
the  master  of  a  force  without  rival  in  the  stress  of  war. 


42G  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

To  England  her  success  was  the  beginning  of  a  career 
of  military  glory,  which  fatal  as  it  was  destined  to  prove 
to  the  higher  sentiments  and  interests  of  the  nation  gave 
it  a  warlike  energy  such  as  it  had  never  known  before. 
Victory  followed  victory.  A  few  months  after  Cregy  a 
Scotch  army  marched  over  the  border  and  faced  on  the 
seventeenth  of  October  an  English  force  at  Neville's  Cross. 
But  it  was  soon  broken  by  the  arrow-flight  of  the  English 
archers,  and  the  Scotch  King  David  Bruce  was  taken  pris- 
oner. The  withdrawal  of  the  French  from  the  Garonne 
enabled  Henry  of  Derby  to  recover  Poitou.  Edward  mean- 
while with  a  decision  which  marks  his  military  capacity 
marched  from  the  field  of  Cregy  to  form  the  siege  of  Calais. 
No  measure  could  have  been  more  popular  with  the  Eng- 
lish merchant  class,  for  Calais  was  a  great  pirate-haven 
and  in  a  single  year  twenty-two  privateers  from  its  port 
had  swept  the  Channel.  But  Edward  was  guided  by 
weightier  considerations  than  this.  In  spite  of  his  victory 
at  Sluys  the  superiority  of  France  at  sea  had  been  a  con- 
stant embarrassment.  From  this  difficulty  the  capture  of 
Calais  would  do  much  to  deliver  him,  for  Dover  and  Calais 
together  bridled  the  Channel.  Nor  was  this  all.  Not  only 
would  the  possession  of  the  town  give  Edward  a  base  of 
operations  against  France,  but  it  afforded  an  easy  means 
of  communication  with  the  only  sure  allies  of  England, 
the  towns  of  Flanders.  Flanders  seemed  at  this  moment 
to  be  wavering.  Its  Count  had  fallen  at  Cregy,  but  his 
son  Lewis  le  Male,  though  his  sympathies  were  as  French 
as  his  father's,  was  received  in  November  by  his  subjects 
with  the  invariable  loyalty  which  they  showed  to  their 
rulers ;  and  his  own  efforts  to  detach  them  from  England 
were  seconded  by  the  influence  of  the  Duke  of  Brabant. 
But  with  Edward  close  at  hand  beneath  the  walls  of  Calais 
the  Flemish  towns  stood  true.  They  prayed  the  young 
Count  to  marry  Edward's  daughter,  imprisoned  him  on 
his  refusal,  and  on  his  escape  to  the  French  Court  in  the 
spring  of  1347  they  threw  themselves  heartily  into  the 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  42? 

English  cause.     A  hundred  thousand  Flemings  advanced 
to  Cassel  and  ravaged  the  French  frontier. 

The  danger  of  Calais  roused  Philip  from  the  panic  which 
had  followed  his  defeat,  and  with  a  vast  army  he  advanced 
to  the  north.  But  Edward's  lines  were  impregnable. 
The  French  King  failed  in  another  attempt  to  dislodge  the 
Flemings,  and  was  at  last  driven  to  retreat  without  a  blow. 
Hopeless  of  further  succor,  the  town  after  a  year's  siege 
was  starved  into  surrender  in  August,  1347.  Mercy  was 
granted  to  the  garrison  and  the  people  on  condition  that  six 
of  the  citizens  gave  themselves  into  the  English  King's 
hands.  "On  them,"  said  Edward  with  a  burst  of  bitter 
hatred,  "  I  will  do  my  will."  At  the  sound  of  the  town  bell, 
Jehan  le  Bel  tells  us,  the  folk  of  Calais  gathered  round  the 
bearer  of  these  terms,  "  desiring  to  hear  their  good  news, 
for  they  were  all  mad  with  hunger.  When  the  said  knight 
told  them  his  news,  then  began  they  to  weep  and  cry  so 
loudly  that  it  was  great  pity.  Then  stood  up  the  wealthiest 
burgess  of  the  town.  Master  Eustache  de  St.  Pierre  by 
name,  and  spake  thus  before  all:  'My  masters,  great  grief 
and  mishap  it  were  for  all  to  leave  such  a  people  as  this  is 
to  die  by  famine  or  otherwise;  and  great  charity  and  grace 
would  he  win  from  our  Lord  who  could  defend  them  from 
dying.  For  me,  I  have  great  hope  in  the  Lord  that  if  I 
can  save  this  people  by  my  death  I  shall  have  pardon  for 
my  faults,  wherefore  will  I  be  the  first  of  the  six,  and  of 
my  own  will  put  myself  barefoot  in  my  shirt  and  with  a 
halter  round  my  neck  in  the  mercy  of  King  Edward. ' '' 
The  list  of  devoted  men  was  soon  made  up,  and  the  vic- 
tims were  led  before  the  king.  "  All  the  host  assembled 
together;  there  was  great  press,  and  many  bade  hang  them 
openly,  and  many  wept  for  pity.  The  noble  King  came 
with  his  train  of  counts  and  barons  to  the  place,  and  the 
Queen  followed  him,  though  great  with  child,  to  see  what 
there  would  be.  The  six  citizens  knelt  down  at  once  be- 
fore the  King,  and  Master  Eustache  spake  thus: — 'Gentle 
King,  here  we  be  six  who  have  been  of  the  old  bourgeoisie 


428        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.    [Book  IV. 

of  Calais  and  great  inerchants  ;  we  bring  yon  the  keys  of 
the  town  and  castle  of  Calais,  and  render  them  to  jou  at 
your  pleasure.  We  set  ourselves  in  such  wise  as  you  see 
purely  at  your  will,  to  save  the  remnant  of  the  people  that 
has  suffered  much  pain.  So  may  you  have  pity  and  mercy 
on  us  for  your  high  nobleness'  sake.'  Certes,  there  was 
then  in  that  place  neither  lord  nor  knight  that  wept  not 
for  pity,  nor  who  could  speak  for  pity ;  but  the  King  had 
his  heart  so  hardened  by  wrath  that  for  a  long  while  he 
could  not  reply ;  then  he  commanded  to  cut  off  their  heads. 
All  the  knights  and  lords  p'-ayed  him  with  tears,  as  much 
as  they  could,  to  have  pity  on  them,  but  he  would  not 
hear.  Then  spoke  the  gentle  knight,  Master  Walter  de 
Mauna}',  and  said,  '  Ha,  gentle  sire !  bridle  your  wrath ; 
you  have  the  renown  and  good  fame  of  all  gentleness ;  do 
not  a  thing  whereby  men  can  speak  any  villany  of  you  ! 
If  you  have  no  pity,  all  men  will  say  that  you  have  a  heart 
full  of  all  cruelty  to  put  these  good  citizens  to  death  that 
of  their  own  will  are  come  to  render  themselves  to  you  to 
save  the  remnant  of  the  people.'  At  this  point  the  King 
changed  countenance  with  wrath,  and  said,  '  Hold  your 
peace.  Master  Walter !  it  shall  be  none  otherwise.  Call 
the  headsman.  They  of  Calais  have  made  so  many  of  my 
men  die,  that  they  must  die  themselves ! '  Then  did  the 
noble  Queen  of  England  a  deed  of  noble  lowliness,  seeing 
she  v;as  great  with  child,  and  wept  so  tenderly  for  pity 
that  she  could  no  longer  stand  upright ;  therefore  she  cast 
herself  on  her  knees  before  her  lord  the  King  and  spake 
on  this  wise :  '  Ah,  gentle  sire,  from  the  day  that  I  passed 
over  sea  in  great  peril,  as  you  know,  I  have  asked  for 
nothing :  now  pray  I  and  beseech  you,  with  folded  hands, 
for  the  love  of  our  Lady's  Son  to  have  mercy  upon  them.' 
The  gentle  King  waited  a  while  before  speaking,  and  looked 
on  the  Queen  as  she  knelt  before  him  bitterly  weeping. 
Then  began  his  lieart  to  soften  a  little,  and  he  said,  'Lady, 
I  would  rather  you  had  been  otherwliere ;  you  pray  so  ten- 
derly that  I  dare  not  refuse  you  ;  and  though  I  do  it  against 


Chap.  2.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  429 


my  will,  nevertheless  take  them.  I  give  them  to  you.' 
Then  took  he  the  six  citizens  by  the  halters  and  delivered 
them  to  the  Queen,  and  released  from  death  all  those  of 
Calais  for  the  love  of  her ;  and  the  good  lady  bade  them 
clothe  the  six  bm-gesses  and  make  them  good  cheer." 


4 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  PEASANT  REVOLT. 

1347—1381. 

Still  in  the  vigor  of  manhood,  for  he  was  but  thirty- 
five,  Edward  the  Third  stood  at  the  height  of  his  renown. 
He  had  won  the  greatest  victory  of  his  age.  France,  till 
now  the  first  of  European  States,  was  broken  and  dashed 
from  her  pride  of  place  at  a  single  blow.  The  kingdom 
seemed  to  he  at  Edward's  mercy,  for  Guienne  was  recov- 
ered, Flanders  was  wholly  on  his  side,  and  Brittany,  where 
the  capture  of  Charles  of  Blois  secured  the  success  of  his 
rival  and  the  English  party  which  supported  him,  opened 
the  road  to  Paris.  At  home  his  government  was  popular, 
and  Scotland,  the  one  enemy  he  had  to  dread,  was  bridled 
by  the  capture  of  her  King.  How  great  his  renown  was 
in  Europe  was  seen  in  1347,  when  on  the  death  of  Lewis 
of  Bavaria  the  electors  offered  him  the  Imperial  Crown. 
Edward  was  in  truth  a  general  of  a  high  order,  and  he 
had  shown  himself  as  consummate  a  strategist  in  the  cam- 
paign as  a  tactician  in  the  field.  But  to  the  world  about 
him  he  was  even  more  illustrious  as  the  foremost  repre- 
sentative of  the  showy  chivalry  of  his  day.  He  loved  the 
pomp  of  tournaments ;  he  revived  the  Round  Table  of  the 
fabled  Arthur;  he  celebrated  his  victories  by  the  creation 
of  a  new  order  of  knighthood.  He  had  varied  the  sterner 
operations  of  the  siege  of  Calais  by  a  hand-to-hand  combat 
with  one  of  the  bravest  of  the  French  knights.  A  naval 
picture  of  Froissart  sketches  Edward  for  us  as  he  sailed  to 
meet  a  Spanish  fleet  which  was  sweeping  the  narrow  seas. 
We  see  the  King  sitting  on  deck  in  his  jacket  of  black 
velvet,  his  head  covered  by  a  black  beaver  bat  "which 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PAELIAMENT.    1307—1461.  451 

became  him  well,"  and  calling  on  Sir  John  Chandos  to  troll 
out  the  songs  he  had  brought  with  him  from  Germany, 
till  the  Spanish  ships  heave  in  sight  and  a  furious  fight 
begins  which  ends  in  a  victory  that  leaves  Edward  "  King 
of  the  Seas." 

But  beneath  all  this  glitter  of  chivalry  lay  the  subtle, 
busy  diplomatist.  None  of  our  Kings  was  so  restless  a 
negotiator.  From  the  first  hour  of  Edward's  rule  the 
threads  of  his  diplomacy  ran  over  Europe  in  almost  inex- 
tricable confusion.  And  to  all  who  dealt  with  him  he  was 
equally  false  and  tricky.  Emperor  was  played  off  against 
Pope  and  Pope  against  Emperor,  the  friendship  of  the 
Flemish  towns  was  adroitly  used  to  put  a  pressure  on  their 
counts,  the  national  wrath  against  the  exactions  of  the 
Roman  see  was  employed  to  bridle  the  French  sympathies 
of  the  court  of  Avignon,  and  when  the  statutes  which  it 
produced  had  served  their  purpose  they  were  set  aside  for 
a  bargain  in  which  King  and  Pope  shared  the  plunder  of 
the  Church  between  them.  His  temper  was  as  false  in 
his  dealings  with  his  people  as  in  his  dealings  with  the 
European  powers.  Edward  aired  to  country  and  parlia- 
ment his  English  patriotism.  "  Above  all  other  lands  and 
realms,"  he  made  his  chancellor  say,  "the  King  had  most 
tenderly  at  heart  his  land  of  England,  a  land  more  full  of 
delight  and  honor  and  profit  to  him  than  any  other."  His 
manners  were  popular ;  he  donned  on  occasion  the  livery 
of  a  city  guild;  he  dined  with  a  London  merchant.  His 
perpetual  parliaments,  his  appeals  to  them  and  to  the 
country  at  large  for  counsel  and  aid,  seemed  to  promise  a 
ruler  who  was  absolutely  one  at  heart  with  the  people  he 
ruled.  But  when  once  Edward  passed  from  sheer  care- 
lessness and  gratification  at  the  new  source  of  wealth  which 
the  Parliament  opened  to  a  sense  of  what  its  power  really 
was  becoming,  he  showed  himself  as  jealous  of  freedom  as 
any  king  that  had  gone  before  him.  He  sold  his  assent  to 
its  demands  for  heavy  subsidies,  and  when  he  had  pocketed 
the  money  coolly  declared  the  statutes  he  had  sanctioned 


432  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

null  and  void.  The  constitutional  progress  which  was 
made  during  his  reign  was  due  to  his  absorption  in  showy 
schemes  of  foreign  ambition,  to  his  preference  for  war  and 
diplomatic  intrigue  over  the  sober  business  of  civil  ad- 
ministration. The  same  shallowness  of  temper,  the  same 
showiness  and  falsehood,  ran  through  his  personal  charac- 
ter. The  King  who  was  a  model  of  chivalry  in  his  deal- 
ings with  knight  and  noble  showed  himself  a  brutal  savage 
to  the  burgesses  of  Calais.  Even  the  courtesy  to  his  Queen 
which  throws  its  halo  over  the  story  of  their  deliverance 
went  hand  in  hand  with  a  constant  disloyalty  to  her. 
"When  once  Philippa  was  dead  his  profligacy  threw  all 
shame  aside.  He  paraded  a  mistress  as  Queen  of  Beauty 
through  the  streets  of  London,  and  set  her  in  pomp  over 
tournaments  as  the  Lady  of  the  Sun.  The  nobles  were 
quick  to  follow  their  lord's  example.  "In  those  days," 
writes  a  chronicler  of  the  time,  "arose a  rumor  and  clamor 
among  the  people  that  wherever  there  was  a  tournament 
there  came  a  great  concourse  of  ladies,  of  the  most  costly 
and  beautiful  but  not  of  the  best  in  the  kingdom,  some- 
times forty  and  fifty  in  number,  as  if  they  were  a  part  of 
the  tournament,  ladies  clad  in  diverse  and  wonderful  male 
apparel,  in  parti-colored  tunics,  with  short  caps  and  bands 
wound  cord-wise  round  their  heads,  and  girdles  bound 
with  gold  and  silver,  and  daggers  in  pouches  across  their 
body.  And  thus  they  rode  on  choice  coursers  to  the  place 
of  tourney ;  and  so  spent  and  wasted  their  goods  and  vexed 
their  bodies  with  scurrilous  wantonness  that  the  murmurs 
of  the  people  sounded  everywhere.  But  they  neither  feared 
God  nor  blushed  at  the  chaste  voice  of  the  people." 

The  "  chaste  voice  of  the  people"  was  soon  to  grow  into 
the  stern  moral  protest  of  the  Lollards,  but  for  the  moment 
all  murmurs  were  hushed  by  the  King's  success.  The 
truce  which  followed  the  capture  of  Calais  seemed  a  mere 
rest  in  the  career  of  victories  which  opened  before  Edward. 
England  was  drunk  with  her  glory  and  with  the  hope  of 
plunder.     The  cloths  of  Caen  had  been  brought  after  the 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  433 

sack  of  that  town  to  London.  "There  was  no  woman," 
says  Walsingham,  "who  had  not  got  garments,  furs, 
feather-beds,  and  utensils  from  the  spoils  of  Calais  and 
other  foreign  cities."  The  Court  revelled  in  gorgeous 
tournaments  and  luxury  of  dress;  and  the  establishment 
in  1346  of  the  Order  of  the  Garter  which  found  its  home 
in  the  new  castle  that  Edward  was  raising  at  Windsor 
marked  the  highest  reach  of  the  spurious  "  Chivalry"  of 
the  day.  But  it  was  at  this  moment  of  triumph  that  the 
whole  color  of  Edward's  reign  suddenly  changed.  The 
most  terrible  plague  the  world  has  ever  witnessed  advanced 
from  the  East,  and  after  devastating  Europe  from  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Baltic  swooped  at  the 
close  of  1348  upon  Britain.  The  traditions  of  its  destruc- 
tiveness  and  the  panic-struck  words  of  the  statutes  passed 
after  its  visitation  have  been  amply  justified  by  modern 
research.  Of  the  three  or  four  millions  who  then  formed 
the  population  of  England  more  than  one-half  were  swept 
away  in  its  repeated  visitations.  Its  ravages  were  fiercest 
in  the  greater  towns  where  filthy  and  undrained  streets 
afforded  a  constant  haunt  to  leprosy  and  fever.  In  the 
burial  ground  which  the  piety  of  Sir  Walter  Maunay  pur- 
chased for  the  citizens  of  London,  a  spot  whose  site  was 
afterward  marked  by  the  Charter  House,  more  than  fifty 
thousand  corpses  are  said  to  have  been  interred.  Thou- 
sands of  people  perished  at  Norwich,  while  in  Bristol  the 
living  were  hardly  able  to  bury  the  dead.  But  the  Black 
Death  fell  on  the  villages  almost  as  fiercely  as  on  the  towns. 
More  than  one-half  of  the  priests  of  Yorkshire  are  known 
to  have  perished;  in  the  diocese  of  Norwich  two-thirds  of 
the  parishes  changed  their  incumbents.  The  whole  or- 
ganization of  labor  was  thrown  out  of  gear.  The  scarcity 
of  hands  produced  by  the  terrible  mortality  made  it  diffi- 
cult for  villeins  to  perform  the  services  due  for  their  lands, 
and  only  a  temporary  abandonment  of  half  the  rent  by  the 
landowners  induced  the  farmers  of  their  demesnes  to  re- 
frain from  the  abandonment  of  their  farms.  For  a  time 
Vol.  I.— 28 


434  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

cultivation  became  impossible.  "The  sheep  and  cattle 
strayed  through  the  fields  and  corn, "  says  a  contemporary, 
"and  there  were  none  left  who  could  drive  them."  Even 
when  the  first  burst  of  panic  was  over,  the  sudden  rise  of 
wages  consequent  on  the  enormous  diminution  in  the  sup- 
ply of  labor,  though  accompanied  by  a  corresponding  rise 
in  the  price  of  food,  rudely  disturbed  the  course  of  indus- 
trial emploj^ments.  Harvests  rotted  on  the  ground  and 
fields  were  left  untilled  not  merely  from  scarcity  of  hands 
but  from  the  strife  which  now  for  the  first  time  revealed 
itself  between  capital  and  labor. 

Nowhere  was  the  effect  of  the  Black  Death  so  keenly 
felt  as  in  its  bearing  on  the  social  revolution  which  had 
been  steadily  going  on  for  a  century  past  throughout  the 
country.  At  the  moment  we  have  reached  the  lord  of  a 
manor  had  been  reduced  over  a  large  part  of  England  to 
the  position  of  a  modern  landlord,  receiving  a  rental  in 
money  from  his  tenants  and  supplying  their  place  in  the 
cultivation  of  his  demesne  lands  by  paid  laborers.  He 
was  driven  by  the  progress  of  enfranchisement  to  rely  for 
the  purposes  of  cultivation  on  the  supply  of  hired  labor, 
and  hitherto  this  supply  had  been  abundant  and  cheap. 
But  with  the  ravages  of  the  Black  Death  and  the  decrease 
of  population  labor  at  once  became  scarce  and  dear.  There 
was  a  general  rise  of  wages,  and  the  farmers  of  the  coun- 
try as  well  as  the  wealthier  craftsmen  of  the  town  saw 
themselves  threatened  with  ruin  by  what  seemed  to  their 
age  the  extravagant  demands  of  the  labor  class.  Mean- 
while the  country  was  torn  with  riot  and  disorder.  An 
outbreak  of  lawless  self-indulgence  which  followed  every- 
where in  the  wake  of  the  plague  told  especially  upon  the 
"landless  men,"  workers  wandering  in  search  of  work  who 
found  themselves  for  the  first  time  masters  of  the  labor 
market;  and  the  wandering  laborer  or  artisan  turned  easily 
into  the  "sturdy  beggar,"  or  the  bandit  of  the  woods.  A 
summary  redress  for  these  evils  was  at  once  provided  by 
the  Crown  in  a  royal  proclamation.     "Because  a  great 


Chap.  3.]  THE  F.iRLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  435 

part  of  the  people,"  ruus  this  ordinance,  "and  principally 
of  laborers  and  servants,  is  dead  of  the  plague,  some,  see- 
ing the  need  of  their  lords  and  the  scarcity  of  servants, 
are  unwilling  to  serve  unless  they  receive  excessive  wages, 
and  others  are  rather  begging  in  idleness  than  supporting 
themselves  by  labor,  we  have  ordained  that  any  able-bodied 
man  or  woman,  of  whatsoever  condition,  free  or  serf,  under 
sixty  years  of  age,  not  living  of  merchandise  nor  following 
a  trade  nor  having  of  his  own  wherewithal  to  live,  either 
his  own  land  with  the  culture  of  which  he  could  occupy 
himself,  and  not  serving  another,  shall  if  so  required  serve 
another  for  such  wages  as  was  the  custom  in  the  twentieth 
year  of  our  reign  or  five  or  six  years  before." 

It  was  the  failure  of  this  ordinance  to  effect  its  ends 
which  brought  about  at  the  close  of  1349  the  passing  of 
the  Statute  of  Laborers.  "Everyman  or  woman,"  runs 
this  famous  provision,  "of  whatsoever  condition,  free  or 
bond,  able  in  body,  and  within  the  age  of  threescore  years, 
.  .  .  and  not  having  of  his  own  whereof  he  may  live, 
nor  land  of  his  own  about  the  tillage  of  which  he  may 
occupy  himself,  and  not  serving  any  other,  shall  be 
bound  to  serve  the  employer  who  shall  require  him  to 
do  so,  and  shall  take  only  the  wages  which  were  accus- 
tomed to  be  taken  in  the  neighborhood  where  he  is  bound 
to  serve"  two  years  before  the  plague  began.  A  refusal 
to  obey  was  punished  by  imprisonment.  But  sterner  meas- 
ures were  soon  found  to  be  necessary.  Not  only  was  the 
price  of  labor  fixed  by  the  Parliament  of  1350  but  the 
labor  class  was  once  more  tied  to  the  soil.  The  laborer 
was  forbidden  to  quit  the  parish  where  he  lived  in  search 
of  better  paid  employment;  if  he  disobeyed  he  became  a 
"fugitive,"  and  subject  to  imprisonment  at  the  hands  of 
justices  of  the  peace.  To  enforce  such  a  law  literally  must 
have  been  impossible,  for  corn  rose  to  so  high  a  price  that 
a  day's  labor  at  the  old  wages  would  not  have  purchased 
wheat  enough  for  a  man's  support.  But  the  landowners 
did  not  flinch  rrom  the  attempt.     The  repeated  re-enact- 


436  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

,  —  -  -■—    '-■       '      I———  I  ■  —■■-■< 

ment  of  the  law  shows  the  difficulty  of  applying  it  and  the 
stubbornness  of  the  struggle  which  it  brought  about.     The 
fines  and  forfeitures  which  were  levied  for  infractions  of 
its  provisions  formed  a  large  source  of  royal  revenue,  but 
so  ineffectual  were  the  original  penalties  that  the  runaway 
laborer  was  at  last  ordered  to  be  branded  with  a  hot  iron 
on  the  forehead,  while  the  harboring  of  serfs  in  towns  was 
rigorously  put  down.     Nor  was  it  merely  the  existing  class 
of  free  laborers  which  was  attacked  by  this  reactionary 
movement.     The  increase  of  their  numbers  by  a  commuta- 
tion of  labor  services  for  money  payments  was  suddenly 
checked,  and  the  ingenuity  of  the  lawyers  who  were  em- 
ployed as  stewards  of  each  manor  was  exercised  in  striving 
to  restore  to  the  landowners  that  customary  labor  whose 
loss  was  now  severely  felt.     Manumissions  and  exemp- 
tions which  had  passed  without  question  were  cancelled 
on  grounds  of  informality,  and  labor  services  from  which 
they  held  themselves  freed  by  redemption  were  again  de- 
manded from  the  villeins.     The  attempt  was  the  more 
galling  that  the  cause  had  to  be  pleaded  in  the  manor- 
court  itself,  and  to  be  decided  by  the  very  officer  whose  in- 
terest it  was  to  give  judgment  in  favor  of  his  lord.     We 
can  see  the  growth  of  a  fierce  spirit  of  resistance  through 
the  statutes  which  strove  in  vain  to  repress  it.     In  the 
towns,  where  the  system  of  forced  labor  was  applied  with 
even  more  rigor  than  in  the  country,  strikes  and  combina- 
tions became  frequent  among  the  lower  craftsmen.     In  the 
country  the  free  laborers  found  allies  in  the  villeins  whose 
freedom   from  manorial   service  was  questioned.     These 
were  often  men  of  position  and  substance,  and  throughout 
the  eastern  counties   the    gatherings  of  "fugitive  serfs" 
were  supported  by  an  organized  resistance  and  by  large 
contributions  of  money  on  the  part  of  the  wealthier  ten- 
antry. 

With  plague,  famine,  and  social  strife  in  the  land,  it 
was  no  time  for  reaping  the  fruits  even  of  such  a  victory 
as  Cregy.     Luckily  for  England  the  pestilence  had  fallen 


Chap.  3.]  THE   PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  437 

as  heavily  on  her  foe  as  on  herself.  A  common  suffering 
and  exhaustion  forced  both  countries  to  a  truce,  and  though 
desultory  fighting  went  on  along  the  Breton  and  Aquita- 
nian  borders,  the  peace  which  was  thus  secured  lasted  with 
brief  intervals  of  fighting  for  seven  years.  It  was  not  till 
1355  that  the  failure  of  a  last  effort  to  turn  the  truce  into 
a  final  peace  again  drove  Edward  into  war.  The  cam- 
paign opened  with  a  brilliant  prospect  of  success.  Charles 
the  Bad,  King  of  Navarre,  held  as  a  prince  of  descent 
from  the  house  of  Valois  large  fiefs  in  Normandy;  and  a 
quarrel  springing  suddenly  up  between  him  and  John, 
who  had  now  succeeded  his  father  Philip  on  the  throne  of 
France,  Charles  offered  to  put  his  fortresses  into  Edward's 
hands.  Master  of  Cherbourg,  Avranches,  Pontaudemer, 
Evreux  and  Meulan,  Mantes,  Mortain,  Pontois,  Charles 
held  in  his  hands  the  kej^s  of  France;  and  Edward  grasped 
at  the  opportunity  of  delivering  a  crushing  blow.  Three 
armies  were  prepared  to  act  in  Normandy,  Brittany,  and 
Guienne.  But  the  first  two,  with  Edward  and  Henry  of 
Derb}^  who  had  been  raised  to  the  dukedom  of  Lancaster, 
at  their  head,  were  detained  by  contrary  winds,  and 
Charles,  despairing  of  their  arrival,  made  peace  with 
John.  Edward  made  his  way  to  Calais  to  meet  the  tid- 
ings of  this  desertion  and  to  be  called  back  to  England  by 
news  of  a  recapture  of  Berwick  by  the  Scots.  But  his 
hopes  of  Norman  co-operation  were  revived  in  1356.  The 
treachery  of  John,  his  seizure  of  the  King  of  Navarre,  and 
his  execution  of  the  Count  of  Harcourt  who  was  looked 
upon  as  the  adviser  of  Charles  in  his  policy  of  intrigue, 
stirred  a  general  rising  throughout  Normandy.  Edward 
at  once  despatched  troops  under  the  Dake  of  Lancaster  to 
its  support.  But  the  insurgents  were  soon  forced  to  fall 
back.  Conscious  of  the  danger  to  which  an  English  occu- 
pation of  Normandy  would  expose  him,  John  hastened 
with  a  large  army  to  the  west,  drove  Lancaster  to  Cher- 
bourg, took  Evreux,  and  besieged  Breteuil. 

Here,  however,  his  progress  was  suddenly  checked  by 


438  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

» " 

news  from  the  south.  The  Black  Prince,  as  the  hero  of 
Cregy  was  called,  had  landed  iii  Guienne  during  the  pre- 
ceding year  and  won  a  disgraceful  success.  Unable  to 
pay  his  troops,  he  staved  off  their  demands  by  a  campai^-a 
of  sheer  pillage.  While  plague  and  war  and  the  anarchy 
which  sprang  up  under  the  weak  government  of  John  were 
bringing  ruin  on  the  northern  and  central  provinces  of 
jFrance,  the  south  remained  prosperous  and  at  peace.  The 
young  prince  led  his  army  of  freebooters  up  the  Garonne 
into  "  what  was  before  one  of  the  fat  countries  of  the  world, 
the  people  good  and  simple,  who  did  not  know  what  war 
was;  indeed  no  war  had  been  waged  against  them  till  the 
Prince  came.  The  English  and  Gascons  found  the  coun- 
try full  and  gay,  the  rooms  adorned  with  carpets  and  dra- 
peries, the  caskets  and  chests  full  of  fair  jewels.  But 
nothing  was  safe  from  these  robbers.  They,  and  espe- 
cially the  Gascons,  who  are  very  greedy,  carried  off  every- 
thing." Glutted  by  the  sack  of  Carcassone  and  Norbonne 
the  plunderers  fell  back  to  Bordeaux,  "  their  horses  so  laden 
with  spoil  that  they  could  hardly  move."  Worthier  work 
awaited  the  Black  Prince  in  the  following  year.  In  the 
plan  of  campaign  for  1356  it  had  been  arranged  that  he 
should  march  upon  the  Loire,  and  there  unite  with  a  force 
under  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  which  was  to  land  in  Brit- 
tany and  push  rapidly  into  the  heart  of  France.  Delays, 
however,  hindered  the  Prince  from  starting  from  Bor- 
deaux till  July,  and  when  his  march  brought  him  to  the 
Loire  the  plan  of  campaign  had  already  broken  down. 
The  outbreak  in  Normandy  had  tempted  the  English 
Council  to  divert  the  force  under  Lancaster  from  Brittany 
to  that  province;  and  the  Duke  was  now  at  Cherbourg, 
hard  pressed  by  the  French  army  under  John.  But  if  its 
original  purpose  was  foiled  the  march  of  the  Black  Prince 
on  the  Loire  served  still  more  effectively  the  English 
cause.  His  advance  pointed  straight  upon  Paris,  and 
again  as  in  the  Cregy  campaign  John  was  forced  to  leave 
all  for   the  protection  of  the  capital.      Hasty  marches 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT      1307—1461.  439 

brought  the  King  to  the  Loire  while  Prince  Edward  still 
lay  at  Vierzon  on  the  Cher.  Unconscious  of  John's  de- 
signs, he  wasted  some  days  in  the  capture  of  Romorantin, 
while  the  French  troops  were  crossing  the  Loire  along  its 
course  from  Orleans  to  Tours  and  John  with  the  advance 
was  hurrying  through  Loches  upon  Poitiers  in  pursuit,  as 
he  supposed,  of  the  retreating  Englishmen.  But  the  move- 
ment of  the  French  army,  near  as  it  was,  was  unknown 
in  the  English  camp;  and  when  the  news  of  it  forced  the 
Black  Prince  to  order  a  retreat  the  enemy  was  already  far 
ahead  of  him.  Edward  reached  the  fields  north  of  Poitiers 
to  find  his  line  of  retreat  cut  off  and  a  French  army  of 
sixty  thousand  men  interposed  between  his  forces  and  Bor- 
deaux. 

If  the  Prince  had  shown  little  ability  in  his  manage- 
ment of  the  campaign,  he  showed  tactical  skill  in  the  fight 
which  was  now  forced  on  him.  On  the  nineteenth  of  Sep- 
tember he  took  a  strong  position  in  the  fields  of  Mauper- 
tuis,  where  his  front  was  covered  by  thick  hedges  and 
approachable  only  by  a  deep  and  narrow  lane  which  ran 
between  vineyards.  The  vineyards  and  hedges  he  lined 
with  bowmen,  and  drew  up  his  small  body  of  men-at-arms 
at  the  point  where  the  lane  opened  upon  the  higher  plain 
on  which  he  was  himself  encamped.  Edward's  force 
numbered  only  eight  thousand  men,  and  the  danger  was 
great  enough  to  force  him  to  offer  in  exchange  for  a  free 
retreat  the  surrender  of  his  prisoners  and  of  the  places  he 
had  taken,  with  an  oath  not  to  fight  against  France  for 
seven  years  to  come.  His  offers,  however,  were  rejected, 
and  the  battle  opened  with  a  charge  of  three  hundred 
French  knights  up  the  narrow  lane.  But  the  lane  was 
soon  choked  with  men  and  horses,  while  the  front  ranks 
of  the  advancing  army  fell  back  before  a  galling  fire  of 
arrows  from  the  hedgerows.  In  this  moment  of  confusion 
a  body  of  English  horsemen,  posted  unseen  by  their  oppo- 
nents on  a  hill  to  the  right,  charged  suddenly  on  the 
French  flank,  and  the  Prince  watching  the  disorder  which 


440  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 


was  caused  by  the  ri  ^  ulse  and  surprise  fell  boldly  on  their 
front.  The  steady  shot  of  the  English  archers  completed 
the  panic  produced  by  this  sudden  attack.  The  first 
French  line  was  driven  in,  and  on  its  rout  the  second,  a 
force  of  sixteen  thousand  men,  at  once  broke  in  wild  terror 
and  fled  from  the  field.  John  still  held  his  ground  with 
the  knights  of  the  reserve,  whom  he  had  unwisely  ordered 
to  dismount  from  their  horses,  till  a  charge  of  the  Black 
Prince  with  two  thousand  lances  threw  this  last  body  into 
confusion.  The  French  King  was  taken,  desperately  fight- 
ing; and  when  his  army  poured  back  at  noon  in  utter  rout 
to  the  gates  of  Poitiers  eight  thousand  of  their  number 
had  fallen  on  the  field,  three  thousand  in  the  flight,  and 
two  thousand  men-at-arms,  with  a  crowd  of  nobles,  were 
taken  prisoners.  The  royal  captive  entered  London  in  tri- 
umph, mounted  on  a  big  white  charger,  while  the  Prince 
rode  by  his  side  on  a  little  black  hackney  to  the  palace  of 
the  Savoy  which  was  chosen  as  John's  dwelling,  and  a 
truce  for  two  years  seemed  to  give  healing-time  to  France. 
With  the  Scots  Edward  the  Third  had  less  good  fortune. 
Kecalled  from  Calais  by  their  seizure  of  Berwick,  the  King 
induced  Bailiol  to  resign  into  his  hands  his  shadowy  sov- 
ereignty, and  in  the  spring  of  1356  marched  upon  Edin- 
burgh with  an  overpowering  army,  harrying  and  burning 
as  he  marched.  But  the  Scots  refused  an  engagement,  a 
fleet  sent  with  provisions  was  beaten  off  by  a  storm,  and 
the  famine-stricken  army  was  forced  to  fall  rapidly  back 
on  the  border  in  a  disastrous  retreat.  The  trial  convinced 
Edward  that  the  conquest  of  Scotland  was  impossible,  and 
by  a  rapid  change  of  policy  which  marks  the  man  he  re- 
solved to  seek  the  friendship  of  the  country  he  had  wasted 
so  long.  David  Bruce  was  released  on  promise  of  ransom, 
a  truce  concluded  for  ten  years,  and  the  prohibition  of 
trade  between  the  two  kingdoms  put  an  end  to.  But  the 
fulness  of  this  reconciliation  screened  a  dextrous  intrigue, 
David  was  childless  and  Edward  availed  himself  of  the 
difficulty  which  the  young  King  experienced  in  finding 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  441 

means  of  providing  the  sum  demanded  for  his  ransom  to 
bring  him  over  to  a  proposal  which  would  have  united  the 
two  countries  forever.  The  scheme,  however,  was  care- 
fully concealed;  and  it  was  not  till  1363  that  David  pro- 
posed to  his  Parliament  to  set  aside  on  his  death  the  claims 
of  the  Steward  of  Scotland  to  his  crown,  and  to  choose 
Edward's  third  son,  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  as  his  suc- 
cessor. Though  the  proposal  was  scornfully  rejected,  ne- 
gotiations were  still  carried  on  between  the  two  Kings  for 
the  realization  of  this  project,  and  were  probably  only  put 
an  end  to  by  the  calamities  of  Edward's  later  years. 

In  France  misery  and  misgovernment  seemed  to  be  doing 
Edward's  work  more  effectively  than  arms.  The  miser- 
able country  found  no  rest  in  itself.  Its  routed  soldiery 
turned  into  free  companies  of  bandits,  while  the  lords  cap- 
tured at  Cregy  or  Poitiers  procured  the  sums  needed  for 
their  ransom  by  extortion  from  the  peasantry.  The  re- 
forms demanded  by  the  States-General  which  met  in  this 
agony  of  France  were  frustrated  by  the  treachery  of  the 
Regent,  John's  eldest  son  Charles,  Duke  of  Normandy, 
till  Paris,  impatient  of  his  weakness  and  misrule,  rose  in 
arms  against  the  Crown.  The  peasants  too,  driven  mad 
by  oppression  and  famine,  rose  in  wild  insurrection,  butch- 
ering their  lords  and  firing  their  castles  over  the  whole 
face  of  France.  Paris  and  the  Jacquerie,  as  this  peasant 
rising  was  called,  were  at  last  crushed  by  treachery  and 
the  sword :  and,  exhausted  as  it  was,  France  still  backed 
the  Regent  in  rejecting  a  treaty  of  peace  by  which  John 
in  1359  proposed  to  buy  his  release.  By  this  treaty  Maine, 
Touraine  and  Poitou  in  the  south,  Normandy,  Guisnes, 
Ponthieu  and  Calais  in  the  west  were  ceded  to  the  English 
King.  On  its  rejection  Edward  in  1360  poured  ravaging 
over  the  wasted  land.  Famine,  however,  proved  its  best 
defence.  "  I  could  not  believe,"  said  Petrarch  of  this  time, 
"that  this  was  the  same  France  which  I  had  seen  so  rich" 
and  flourishing.  Nothing  presented  itself  to  my  eyes  but 
a  fearful   solitude,  an  utter  poverty,  land  uncultivated, 


412  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

houses  in  ruins.  Even  the  neighborhood  of  Paris  showed 
everywhere  marks  of  desolation  and  conflagration.  The 
streets  are  deserted,  the  roads  overgrown  with  weeds,  the 
'vvhole  is  a  vast  solitude."  The  utter  desolation  forced 
Edward  to  carry  with  him  an  immense  train  of  provisions, 
and  thousands  of  baggage  wagons  with  mills,  ovens, 
forges,  and  fishing- boats,  formed  a  long  train  which 
streamed  for  six  miles  behind  his  army.  After  a  fruitless 
attempt  upon  Rheims  he  forced  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  to 
conclude  a  treaty  with  him  by  pushing  forward  to  Ton- 
nerre,  and  then  descending  the  Seine  appeared  with  his 
army  before  Paris.  But  the  wasted  country  forbade  a 
siege,  and  Edward  after  summoning  the  town  in  vain  was 
forced  to  fall  back  for  subsistence  on  the  Loire.  It  was 
during  this  march  that  the  Duke  of  Normandy's  envoys 
overtook  him  with  proposals  of  peace.  The  miserj'^  of  the 
land  had  at  last  bent  Charles  to  submission,  and  in  May  a 
treaty  was  concluded  at  Bretigny,  a  small  place  to  the 
eastward  of  Chartres.  By  this  treaty  the  English  King 
waived  his  claims  on  the  crown  of  France  and  on  the 
Duchy  of  Normandy.  On  the  other  hand,  his  Duchy  of 
Aquitaine,  which  included  Gascony,  Guienne,  Poitou, 
and  Saintonge,  the  Limousin  and  the  Angoumois,  Peri- 
gord  and  the  counties  of  Bigorre  and  Rouerque,  was  not 
only  restored  but  freed  from  its  obligations  as  a  French 
fief  and  granted  in  full  sovereignty  with  Ponthieu,  Ed- 
ward's heritage  from  the  second  wife  of  Edward  the  First, 
as  well  as  with  Guisnes  and  his  new  conquest  of  Calais. 
The  Peace  of  Bretigny  set  its  seal  upon  Edward's  glory. 
But  within  England  itself  the  misery  of  the  people  was 
deepening  every  hour.  Men  believed  the  world  to  be  end- 
ing, and  the  judgment  day  to  be  near.  A  few  months 
after  the  Peace  came  a  fresh  swoop  of  the  Black  Death, 
carrying  off  the  Duke  of  Lancaster.  The  repressive  meas- 
ures of  parliament  and  the  landowners  only  widened  the 
social  chasm  which  parted  employer  from  employed.  We 
can  see  the  growth  of  a  fierce  spirit  of  resistance  both  to 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  443 

tbe  reactionary  efforts  which  were  being  made  to  bring 
back  labor  services  and  to  the  enactments  which  again 
bound  labor  to  the  soil  in  statutes  which  strove  in  vain  to 
repress  the  strikes  and  combinations  which  became  fre- 
quent in  the  towns  and  the  more  formidable  gatherings  of 
villeins  and  "fugitive  serfs"  in  the  country  at  large.  A 
statute  of  later  date  throws  light  on  the  nature  of  the  re- 
sistance of  the  last.  It  tells  us  that  "  villeins  and  holders 
of  land  in  villeinage  withdrew  their  customs  and  services 
from  their  lords,  having  attached  themselves  to  other  per- 
sons who  maintained  and  abetted  them,  and  who  under 
color  of  exemplifications  from  Domesday  of  the  manors 
and  villages  where  they  dwelt  claimed  to  be  quit  of  all 
manner  of  services  either  of  their  body  or  of  their  lands, 
and  would  suffer  no  distress  or  other  course  of  justice  to 
be  taken  against  them;  the  villeins  aiding  their  main- 
tainers  by  threatening  the  officers  of  their  lords  with  peril 
to  life  and  limb  as  well  by  open  assemblies  as  by  confed- 
eracies to  support  each  other."  It  would  seem  not  only  as 
if  the  villein  was  striving  to  resist  the  reactionary  tendency 
of  the  lords  of  manors  to  regain  his  labor  service,  but  that 
in  the  general  overturning  of  social  institutions  the  copy- 
holder was  struggling  to  make  himself  a  freeholder,  and 
the  farmer  to  be  recognized  as  a  proprietor  of  the  demesne 
he  held  on  lease. 

A  more  terrible  outcome  of  the  general  suffering  was 
Been  in  a  new  revolt  against  the  whole  system  of  social 
inequality  which  had  till  then  passed  unquestioned  as  the 
divine  order  of  the  world.  The  Peace  was  hardly  signed 
when  the  crj^  of  the  poor  found  a  terrible  utterance  in  the 
words  of  "a  mad  priest  of  Kent,"  as  the  courtly  Froissart 
isalls  him,  who  for  twenty  years  to  come  found  audienop 
for  his  sermons  in  spite  of  interdict  and  imprisonment  in 
the  stout  yeomen  who  gathered  round  him  in  the  church- 
yards of  Kent.  "Mad,"  as  the  landowners  held  him  to 
be,  it  was  in  the  preaching  of  John  Ball  that  England  firsst 
listened  to  a  declaration  of  the  natural  equality  and  rights 


444  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

of  man.  "Good  people,"  cried  the  preacher,  "things  will 
never  be  well  in  England  so  long  as  goods  be  not  in  com- 
mon, and  so  long  as  there  be  villeins  and  gentlemen.  By 
what  right  are  they  whom  we  call  lords  greater  folk  than 
we?  On  what  grounds  have  they  deserved  it?  Why  do 
they  hold  us  in  serfage?  If  we  all  came  of  the  same 
father  and  mother,  of  Adam  and  Eve,  how  can  they  say 
or  prove  that  they  are  better  than  we,  if  it  be  not  that  they 
make  us  gain  for  them  b}-  our  toil  what  they  spend  in  their 
pride?  They  are  clothed  in  velvet  and  warm  in  their  furs 
and  their  ermines,  while  we  are  covered  with  rags.  They 
have  wine  and  spices  and  fair  bread ;  and  we  oat-cake  and 
straw,  and  water  to  drink.  They  have  leisure  and  fine 
houses ;  we  have  pain  and  labor,  the  rain  and  the  wind  in 
the  fields.  And  yet  it  is  of  us  and  of  our  toil  that  these 
men  hold  their  state."  It  was  the  tyranny  of  property 
that  then  as  ever  roused  the  defiance  of  socialism.  A 
spirit  fatal  to  the  whole  system  of  the  Middle  Ages  breathed 
in  the  popular  rhyme  which  condensed  the  levelling  doc- 
trine of  John  Ball : 

"When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman? ' ' 

More  impressive,  because  of  the  very  restraint  and  mod- 
eration of  its  tone,  is  the  poem  in  which  William  Longland 
began  at  the  same  moment  to  embody  with  a  terrible  fidel- 
ity all  the  darker  and  sterner  aspects  of  the  time,  its  social 
revolt,  its  moral  and  religious  awakening,  the  misery  of 
the  poor,  the  selfishness  and  corruption  of  the  rich.  Noth- 
ing brings  more  vividly  home  to  us  the  social  chasm  which 
in  the  fourteenth  century  severed  the  rich  from  the  poor 
than  the  contrast  between  his  "  Complaint  of  Piers  the 
Ploughman"  and  the  "Canterbury  Tales."  The  world  of 
wealth  and  ease  and  laughter  through  which  the  courtly 
Chaucer  moves  with  eyes  downcast  as  in  a  pleasant  dream 
is  a  far  off  world  of  wrong  and  of  ungodliness  to  the  gaunt 
poet  of  the  poor.     Born  probably  in  Shropshire,  where  he 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  445 

had  been  put  to  school  and  received  minor  orders  as  a 
clerk,  "Long  Will,"  as  Longland  was  nicknamed  from 
his  tall  stature,  found  his  way  at  an  early  age  to  London, 
and  earned  a  miserable  livelihood  there  by  singing  "  place- 
bos" and  "  diriges"  in  the  stately  funerals  of  his  day.  Men 
took  the  moodj'  clerk  for  a  madman;  his  bitter  poverty 
quickened  the  defiant  pride  that  made  him  loath,  as  he 
tells  us,  to  bow  to  the  gay  lords  and  dames  who  rode  decked 
in  silver  and  minivere  along  the  Cheap  or  to  exchange  a 
"  God  save  you"  with  the  law  sergeants  as  he  passed  their 
new  house  in  the  Temple.  His  world  is  the  world  of  the 
poor:  he  dwells  on  the  poor  man's  life,  on  his  burger  and 
toil,  his  rough  revelry  and  his  despair,  with  the  narrow 
intensity  of  a  man  who  has  no  outlook  beyond  it.  The 
narrowness,  the  misery,  the  monotony  of  the  life  he  paints 
reflect  themselves  in  his  verse.  It  is  only  here  and  there 
that  a  love  of  nature  or  a  grim  earnestness  of  wrath  quick- 
ens his  rhyme  into  poetry ;  there  is  not  a  gleam  of  the  bright 
human  sympathy  of  Chaucer,  of  his  fresh  delight  in  the 
gaj'ety,  the  tenderness,  the  daring  of  the  world  about  him, 
of  his  picturesque  sense  of  even  its  coarsest  contrasts,  of  his 
delicate  irony,  of  his  courtly  wit.  The  cumbrous  allegory, 
the  tedious  platitudes,  the  rhymed  texts  from  Scripture 
which  form  the  staple  of  Longland 's  work,  are  only 
broken  here  and  there  by  phrases  of  a  shrewd  common 
sense,  by  bitter  outbursts,  by  pictures  of  a  broad  Hogarth- 
ian  humor.  What  chains  one  to  the  poem  is  its  deep 
undertone  of  sadness :  the  world  is  out  of  joint,  and  the 
gaunt  rhymer  who  stalks  silently  along  the  Strand  has  no 
faith  in  his  power  to  put  it  right. 

Londoner  as  be  is,  Will's  fancy  flies  far  from  the  sin  and 
suffering  of  the  great  city  to  a  May  morning  in  the  Mal- 
vern Hills.  "  I  was  very  forwandered  and  went  me  to  rest 
under  a  broad  bank  by  a  burn  side,  and  as  I  lay  and  leaned 
and  looked  in  the  water  I  slumbered  in  a  sleeping,  it 
Bweyved  (sounded)  so  merry."  Just  as  Chaucer  gathers 
the  typical  figures  of  the  world  he  saw  into  his  pilgrim 


446  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

train,  so  the  dreamer  gathers  into  a  wide  field  his  army  of 
traders  and  chafferers,  of  hermits  and  solitaries,  of  min- 
strels," japers  and  jinglers,"  bidders  and  beggars,  plough- 
men that  "  in  setting  and  in  sowing  swonken  (toil)  full 
hard,"  pilgrims  "with  their  wenches  after,"  weavers  and 
laborers,  burgess  and  bondman,  lawyer  and  scrivener, 
court-haunting  bishops,  friars,  and  pardoners  "  parting  the 
silver"  with  the  parish  priest.  Their  pilgrimage  is  not  to 
Canterbury  but  to  Truth;  their  guide  to  Truth  neither 
clerk  nor  priest  but  Peterkin  the  Ploughman,  whom  they 
find  ploughing  in  his  field.  He  it  is  who  bids  the  knight 
no  more  wrest  gifts  from  his  tenant  nor  misdo  with  the 
poor,  "  Though  he  be  thine  underling  here,  well  may  hap 
in  heaven  that  he  be  worthier  set  and  with  more  bliss  than 
thou.  .  .  .  For  in  charnel  at  church  churles  be  evil  to 
know,  or  a  knight  from  a  knave  there."  The  gospel  of 
equality  is  backed  by  the  gospel  of  labor.  The  aim  of  the 
Ploughman  is  to  work,  and  to  make  the  world  work  with 
him.  He  warns  the  laborer  as  he  warns  the  knight. 
Hunger  is  God's  instrument  in  bringing  the  idlest  to  toil, 
and  Hunger  waits  to  work  her  will  on  the  idler  and  the 
waster.  On  the  eve  of  the  great  struggle  between  wealth 
and  labor,  Longland  stands  alone  in  his  fairness  to  both, 
in  his  shrewd  political  and  religious  common  sense.  In 
the  face  of  the  popular  hatred  which  was  to  gather  round 
John  of  Gaunt,  he  paints  the  Duke  in  a  famous  apologue 
as  the  cat  who,  greedy  as  she  might  be,  at  any  rate  keeps 
the  noble  rats  from  utterly  devouring  the  mice  of  the 
people.  Though  the  poet  is  loyal  to  the  Church,  he  pro- 
claims a  righteous  life  to  be  better  than  a  host  of  indul- 
gences, and  God  sends  His  pardon  to  Piers  when  priests 
dispute  it.  But  he  sings  as  a  man  conscious  of  his  loneli- 
ness and  without  hope.  It  is  only  in  a  dream  that  he  sees 
Corruption,  "  Lady  Mead,"  brought  to  trial,  and  the  world 
repenting  at  the  preaching  of  Reason.  In  the  waking  life 
reason  finds  no  listeners.  The  poet  himself  is  looked  upon 
—he  tells  us  bitterly — as  a  madman.     There  is  a  terrible 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  447 

despair  in  the  close  of  his  later  poem,  where  the  triumph 
of  Christ  is  only  followed  by  the  reign  of  Antichrist ;  where 
Contrition  slumbers  amid  the  revel  of  Death  and  Sin; 
and  Conscience,  hard  beset  by  Pride  and  Sloth,  rouses 
himself  with  a  last  effort,  and  seizing  his  pilgrim  staff, 
wanders  over  the  world  to  find  Piers  Ploughman. 

The  strife  indeed  which  Longland  would  have  averted 
raged  only  the  fiercer  as  the  dark  years  went  by.  If  the 
Statutes  of  Laborers  were  powerless  for  their  immediate 
ends,  either  in  reducing  the  actual  rate  of  wages  or  in  re- 
stricting the  mass  of  floating  labor  to  definite  areas  of  em- 
ployment, they  proved  effective  in  sowing  hatred  between 
employe''  and  employed,  between  rich  and  poor.  But  this 
social  rift  was  not  the  only  rift  which  was  opening  amidst 
the  distress  and  misery  of  the  time.  The  close  of  William 
Longland's  poem  is  the  prophecy  of  a  religious  revolution ; 
and  the  way  for  such  a  revolution  was  being  paved  by  the 
growing  bitterness  of  strife  between  England  and  the  Pa- 
pacy. In  spite  of  the  sharp  protests  from  king  and  parlia- 
ment the  need  for  money  at  Avignon  was  too  great  to  allow 
any  relaxation  in  the  Papal  claims.  Almost  on  the  eve  of 
Cregy  Edward  took  the  decisive  step  of  forbidding  the  en- 
try into  England  of  any  Papal  bulls  or  documents  inter- 
fering with  the  rights  of  presentation  belonging  to  private 
patrons.  But  the  tenacity  of  Rome  was  far  from  loosening 
its  grasp  on  this  source  of  revenue  for  all  Edward's  pro- 
tests. Cregy  however  gave  a  new  boldness  to  the  action 
of  the  state,  and  a  Statute  of  Provisors  was  passed  by  the 
Parliament  in  1351  which  again  asserted  the  rights  of  the 
English  Church  and  enacted  that  all  who  infringed  them 
by  the  introduction  of  Papal  "  provisors"  should  suffer  im- 
prisonment. But  resistance  to  provisors  only  brought  fresh 
vexations.  The  patrons  who  withstood  a  Papal  nominee  in 
the  name  of  the  law  were  summoned  to  defend  themselves 
in  the  Papal  Court.  From  that  moment  the  supremacy  of 
the  Papal  law  over  the  law  of  the  land  became  a  great  ques- 
tion in  which  the  lesser  question  of    provisors  merged. 


448  HISTORY  OF   fHE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


The  pretension  of  the  Court  of  Avignon  was  met  in  1353 
by  a  statute  which  forbade  any  questioning  of  judgments 
rendered  in  the  king's  courts  or  any  prosecution  of  a  suit 
in  foreign  courts  under  pain  of  outlawry,  perpetual  impris- 
onment, or  banishment  from  the  land.  It  was  this  act  of 
Praemunire — as  it  came  in  after  renewals  to  be  called — 
which  furnished  so  terrible  a  weapon  to  the  Tudors  in  their 
later  strife  with  Rome.  But  the  Papacy  paid  little  heed  to 
these  warnings,  and  its  obstinacy  in  still  receiving  suits 
and  appeals  in  defiance  of  this  statute  roused  the  pride  of  a 
conquering  people.  England  was  still  fresh  from  her  glory 
at  Bretigny  when  Edward  appealed  to  the  Parliament  of 
1365.  Complaints,  he  said,  were  constantly  being  made 
by  his  subjects  to  the  Pope  as  to  matters  which  were  cog- 
nizable in  the  King's  courts.  The  practice  of  provisors 
was  thus  maintained  in  the  teeth  of  the  laws,  and  "the 
laws,  usages,  ancient  customs,  and  franchises  of  his  king- 
dom were  thereby  much  hindered,  the  King's  crown  de- 
graded, and  his  person  defamed."  The  King's  appeal  was 
hotly  met.  "Biting  words,"  which  it  was  thought  wise 
to  suppress,  were  used  in  the  debate  which  followed,  and 
the  statutes  against  provisors  and  appeals  were  solemnly 
confirmed. 

What  gave  point  to  this  challenge  was  the  assent  of 
the  prelates  to  the  proceedings  of  the  Parliament;  and  the 
pride  of  Urban  V.  at  once  met  it  by  a  counter-defiance.  He 
demanded  with  threats  the  payment  of  the  annual  sum  of 
a  thousand  marks  promised  by  King  John  in  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  suzerainty  of  the  See  of  Rome.  The  insult 
roused  the  temper  of  the  realm.  The  King  laid  the  de- 
mand before  Parliament,  and  both  houses  replied  that 
"  neither  King  John  nor  any  king  could  put  himself,  his 
kingdom,  nor  his  people  under  subjection  save  with  their 
accord  or  assent."  John's  submission  had  been  made 
"  without  their  assent  and  against  his  coronation  oath"  and 
they  pledged  themselves,  should  the  Pope  attempt  to  en- 
force his  claim,  to  resist  him  with  all  their  power.     Even 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  449 

Urban  shrank  from  imperilling  the  Papacy  by  any  further 
demands,  and  the  claim  to  a  Papal  lordship  over  England 
was  never  again  heard  of.  But  the  struggle  had  brought 
to  the  front  a  man  who  was  destined  to  give  a  far  wider 
scope  and  significance  to  this  resistance  to  Rome  than  any 
as  yet  dreamed  of.  Nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the 
contrast  between  the  obscurity  of  John  Wyclif's  earlier 
life  and  the  fulness  and  vividness  of  our  knowledge  of  him 
during  the  twenty  years  which  preceded  its  close.  Born 
in  the  earlier  part  of  the  fourteenth  century,  he  had  already 
passed  middle  age  when  he  was  appointed  to  the  master- 
ship of  Balliol  College  in  the  University  of  Oxford  and 
recognized  as  first  among  the  schoolmen  of  his  day.  Of 
all  the  scholastic  doctors  those  of  England  had  been  through- 
out the  keenest  and  most  daring  in  philosophical  specula- 
tion. A  reckless  audacitj^  and  love  of  novelty  was  the 
common  note  of  Bacon,  Duns  Scotus,  and  Ockham,  as 
against  the  sober  and  more  disciplined  learning  of  the  Pari- 
sian schoolmen,  Albert  and  Thomas  Aquinas.  The  decay  of 
the  University  of  Paris  during  the  English  wars  was  trans- 
ferring her  intellectual  supremacy  to  Oxford,  and  in  Oxford 
Wyclif  stood  without  a  rival.  From  his  predecessor,  Brad- 
wardine,  whose  work  as  a  scholastic  teacher  he  carried  on 
in  the  speculative  treatises  he  published  during  this  period, 
he  inherited  the  tendency  to  a  predestinarian  Augustinian- 
ism  which  formed  the  groundwork  of  his  later  theological 
revolt.  His  debt  to  Ockham  revealed  itself  in  his  earliest 
efforts  at  Church  reform.  Undismayed  by  the  thunder 
and  excommunications  of  the  Church,  Ockham  had  sup- 
ported the  Emperor  Lewis  of  Bavaria  in  his  recent  strug- 
gle, and  he  had  not  shrunk  in  his  enthusiasm  for  the  Em- 
pire from  attacking  the  foundations  of  the  Papal  supremacy 
or  from  asserting  the  rights  of  the  civil  power.  The  spare, 
emaciated  frame  of  Wyclif,  weakened  by  study  and  as- 
ceticism, hardly  promised  a  reformer  who  would  carry  on 
the  stormy  work  of  Ockham;  but  within  this  frail  form 
lay  a  temper  quick  and  restless,  an  immense  energy,  an 
Vol.  I.— 29 


450  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

immovable  conviction,  an  unconquerable  pride.  The  per- 
sonal charm  which  ever  accompanies  real  greatness  only 
deepened  the  influence  he  derived  from  the  spotless  purity 
of  his  life.  As  yet  indeed  even  Wyclif  himself  can  hardly 
have  suspected  the  immense  range  of  his  intellectual  power. 
It  was  only  the  struggle  that  lay  before  him  which  revealed 
in  the  dry  and  subtle  schoolman  the  founder  of  our  later 
English  prose,  a  master  of  popular  invective,  of  irony,  of 
persuasion,  a  dexterous  politician,  an  audacious  partisan, 
the  organizer  of  a  religious  order,  the  unsparing  assailant 
of  abuses,  the  boldest  and  most  indefatigable  of  controver- 
sialists, the  first  Reformer  who  dared,  when  deserted  and 
alone,  to  question  and  deny  the  creed  of  the  Christendom 
around  him,  to  break  through  the  tradition  of  the  past, 
and  with  his  last  breath  to  assert  the  freedom  of  religious 
thought  against  the  dogmas  of  the  Papacy. 

At  the  moment  of  the  quarrel  with  Pope  Urban  however 
Wyclif  was  far  from  having  advanced  to  such  a  position 
as  this.  As  the  most  prominent  of  English  scholars  it  was 
natural  that  he  should  come  forward  in  defence  of  the  in- 
dependence and  freedom  of  the  English  Church ;  and  he 
published  a  formal  refutation  of  the  claims  advanced  by 
the  Papacy  to  deal  at  its  will  with  church  property  in  the 
form  of  a  report  of  the  Parliamentary  debates  which  we 
have  described.  As  yet  his  quarrel  was  not  with  the  doc- 
trines of  Rome  but  with  its  practices;  and  it  was  on  the 
principles  of  Ockham  that  he  defended  the  Parliament's 
refusal  of  the  "tribute"  which  was  claimed  by  Urban. 
But  his  treatise  on  "  The  Kingdom  of  God,"  "  De  Dominic 
Divino,"  which  can  hardly  have  been  written  later  than 
1368,  shows  the  breadth  of  the  ground  he  was  even  now 
prepared  to  take  up.  In  this,  the  most  famous  of  his 
works,  Wyclif  bases  his  argument  on  a  distinct  ideal  of 
society.  All  authority,  to  use  his  own  expression,  is 
"founded  in  grace."  Dominion  in  the  highest  sense  is  in 
God  alone;  it  is  God  who  as  the  suzerain  of  the  universe 
deals  out  His  rule  in  fief  to  rulers  in  their  various  stations 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  461 

on  tenure  of  their  obedience  to  himself.  It  was  easy  to 
object  that  in  such  a  case  "  dominion"  could  never  exist, 
since  mortal  sin  is  a  breach  of  such  a  tenure  and  all  men 
sin.  But,  as  Wyclif  urged  it,  the  theory  is  a  purely  ideal 
one.  In  actual  practice  he  distinguishes  between  dominion 
and  power,  power  which  the  wicked  may  have  by  God's 
permission,  and  to  which  the  Christian  must  submit  from 
motives  of  obedience  to  God.  In  his  own  scholastic  phrase, 
so  strangely  perverted  afterward,  here  on  earth  "  God  must 
obey  the  devil."  But  whether  in  the  ideal  or  practical 
riew  of  the  matter  all  power  and  dominion  was  of  God. 
[t  was  granted  by  Him  not  to  one  person.  His  Vicar  on 
earth,  as  the  Papacy  alleged,  but  to  all.  The  King  waa 
as  truly  God's  Vicar  as  the  Pope.  The  royal  power  was 
as  sacred  as  the  ecclesiastical,  and  as  complete  over  tem- 
poral things,  even  over  the  temporalities  of  the  Church, 
as  that  of  the  Church  over  spiritual  things.  So  far  as  the 
question  of  Church  and  State  therefore  was  concerned  the 
distinction  between  the  ideal  and  practical  view  of  "  do- 
minion" was  of  little  account.  Wyclif 's  application  of  the 
theory  to  the  individual  conscience  was  of  far  higher  and 
wider  importance.  Obedient  as  each  Christian  might  be 
to  king  or  priest,  he  himself  as  a  possessor  of  "  domiHion" 
held  immediately  of  God.  The  throne  of  God  Himself 
was  the  tribunal  of  personal  appeal.  What  the  Reformers 
of  tne  sixteenth  century  attempted  to  do  by  their  theory  of 
Justification  by  Faith  Wyclif  attempted  to  do  by  his  the- 
ory of  Dominion,  a  theory  which  in  establishing  a  direct 
relation  between  man  and  God  swept  away  the  whole  basis 
of  a  mediating  priesthood,  the  very  foundation  on  which 
the  mediaeval  church  was  built. 

As  yet  the  full  bearing  of  these  doctrines  was  little  seen. 
But  the  social  and  religious  excitement  which  we  have  de- 
scribed was  quickened  by  the  renewal  of  the  war,  and  the 
general  suffering  and  discontent  gathered  bitterness  when 
the  success  which  had  flushed  England  with  a  new  and 
warlike  pride  passed  into  a  long  series  of  disasters  in  which 


452  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

men  forgot  the  glories  of  Cveqy  and  Poitiers.  Triumph 
as  it  seemed,  the  treaty  of  Bretigny  was  really  fatal  to  Ed- 
ward's cause  in  the  south  of  Franco.  By  the  cession  of 
Aquitaine  to  him  in  full  sovereignty  the  traditional  claim 
on  which  his  strength  rested  lost  its  force.  The  people  of 
the  south  had  clung  to  their  Duke,  even  though  their  Duke 
was  a  foreign  ruler.  They  had  stubbornly  resisted  incor- 
poration with  Northern  France.  "While  preserving  how- 
ever their  traditional  fealty  to  the  descendants  of  Eleanor 
they  still  clung  to  the  equally  traditional  suzerainty  of  the 
Kings  of  France.  But  the  treaty  of  Bretigny  not  only 
severed  them  from  the  realm  of  France,  it  subjected  them 
to  the  realm  of  England.  Edward  ceased  to  be  their  he- 
reditary Duke,  he  became  simply  an  English  king  ruling 
Aquitaine  as  an  English  dominion.  If  the  Southerners 
loved  the  North-French  little,  they  loved  the  English  less, 
and  the  treaty  which  thus  changed  their  whole  position 
was  followed  by  a  quick  revulsion  of  feeling  from  the  Ga- 
ronne to  the  Pyrenees.  The  Gascon  nobles  declared  that 
John  had  no  right  to  transfer  their  fealty  to  another  and 
to  sever  them  from  the  realm  of  France.  The  city  of  Ro- 
chelle  prayed  the  French  King  not  to  release  it  from  its 
fealty  to  him.  "  We  will  obey  the  English  with  our  lips," 
said  its  citizens,  "but  our  hearts  shall  never  be  moved 
toward  them."  Edward  strove  to  meet  this  passion  foi 
local  independence,  this  hatred  of  being  ruled  from  Lon« 
don,  by  sending  the  Black  Prince  to  Bordeaux  and  invest- 
ing him  in  1362  with  the  Duchy  of  Aquitaine.  But  tho 
new  Duke  held  his  Duchy  as  a  fief  from  the  English  King, 
and  the  grievance  of  the  Southerners  was  left  untouched. 
Charles  V.  who  succeeded  his  father  John  in  1364  silently 
prepared  to  reap  this  harvest  of  discontent.  Patient,  wary, 
unscrupulous,  he  was  hardly  crowned  before  he  put  an  end 
to  the  war  which  had  gone  on  without  a  pause  in  Brittany 
by  accepting  homage  from  the  claimant  whom  France  had 
hitherto  opposed.  Through  Bertraud  du  Guesclin,  a  fine 
soldier  whom  his  sagacity  had  discovered,  he  forced  tb» 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  453 

King  of  Navarre  to  a  peace  which  closed  the  fighting  in 
Normandy.  A  more  formidable  difficulty  in  the  way  of 
pacification  and  order  lay  in  the  Free  Companies,  a  union 
of  marauders  whom  the  disbanding  of  both  armies  after 
the  peace  had  set  free  to  harry  the  wasted  land  and  whom 
the  King's  military  resources  were  insufficient  to  cope 
with.  It  was  the  stroke  by  which  Charles  cleared  his 
realm  of  these  scourges  which  forced  on  a  new  struggle 
with  the  English  in  the  south. 

In  the  judgment  of  the  English  court  the  friendship  of 
Castille  was  of  the  first  importance  for  the  security  of 
Aquitaine.  Spain  was  the  strongest  naval  power  of  the 
western  world,  and  not  only  would  the  ports  of  Guienne 
be  closed  but  its  communication  with  England  would  be 
at  once  cut  off  by  the  appearance  of  a  joint  French  and 
Spanish  fleet  in  the  Channel.  It  was  with  satisfaction 
therefore  that  Edward  saw  the  growth  of  a  bitter  hostility 
between  Charles  and  the  Castilian  King,  Pedro  the  Cruel, 
through  the  murder  of  his  wife,  Blanche  of  Bourbon,  the 
French  King's  sister-in-law.  Henry  of  Trastamara,  a 
bastard  son  of  Pedro's  father,  Alfonso  the  Eleventh,  had 
lone:  been  a  refugee  at  the  French  court,  and  soon  after  the 
treaty  of  Bretigny  Charles  in  his  desire  to  revenge  this 
murder  on  Pedro  gave  Henry  aid  in  an  attempt  on  tlie 
Castilian  throne.  It  was  impossible  for  England  to  look 
on  with  indifference  while  a  dependant  of  the  French  King 
became  master  of  Castille ;  and  in  1362  a  treaty  offensive 
and  defensive  was  concluded  between  Pedro  and  Edward 
the  Third.  The  time  was  not  come  for  open  war ;  but  the 
subtle  policy  of  Charles  saw  in  this  strife  across  the  Pyre- 
nees an  opportunity  both  of  detaching  Castille  from  the 
English  cause  and  of  ridding  himself  of  the  Free  Compa- 
nies. With  characteristic  caution  he  dextrously  held  him- 
self in  the  background  while  he  made  use  of  the  Pope,  who 
had  been  threatened  by  the  Free  Companies  in  his  palace 
at  Avignon  and  was  as  anxious  to  get  rid  of  them  as  him- 
self.    Pedro's  cruelty,  misgovernment,  and  alliance  with 


454  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

the  Moslem  of  Cordova  served  as  grounds  for  a  crusade 
which  was  proclaimed  by  Pope  Urban ;  and  Du  Guesclin, 
who  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  expedition,  found  in  the 
Papal  treasury  and  in  the  hope  of  booty  from  an  unravaged 
land  means  of  gathering  the  marauders  round  his  standard. 
A.S  soon  as  these  Crusaders  crossed  the  Ebro  Pedro  was  de- 
serted by  his  subjects,  and  in  1366  Henry  of  Trastamara 
saw  himself  crowned  without  a  struggle  at  Burgos  as  King 
of  Castillo.  Pedro  with  his  two  daughters  fled  for  shelter 
to  Bordeaux  and  claimed  the  aid  promised  in  the  treaty. 
The  lords  of  Aquitaine  shrank  from  fighting  for  such  a 
cause,  but  in  spite  of  their  protests  and  the  reluctance  of 
the  English  council  to  embark  in  so  distant  a  struggle  Ed- 
ward held  that  he  had  no  choice  save  to  replace  his  ally, 
for  to  leave  Henry  seated  on  the  throne  was  to  leave  Aqui- 
taine to  be  crushed  between  France  and  Castille. 

The  after  course  of  the  war  proved  that  in  his  anticipa- 
tions of  the  fatal  result  of  a  combination  of  the  two  pow- 
ers Edward  was  right,  but  his  policy  jarred  not  only  against 
the  universal  craving  for  rest,  but  against  the  moral  sense 
of  the  world.  The  Black  Prince  however  proceeded  to 
carry  out  his  father's  design  in  the  teeth  of  the  general 
opposition.  His  call  to  arms  robbed  Henry  of  the  aid  of 
those  English  Companies  who  had  marched  till  now  with 
the  rest  of  the  crusaders,  but  who  returned  at  once  to  the 
standard  of  the  Prince ;  the  passes  of  Navarre  were  opened 
with  gold,  and  in  the  beginning  of  1367  the  EngUsh  army 
crossed  the  Pyrenees.  Advancing  to  the  Ebro  the  Prince 
offered  battle  at  Navarete  with  an  army  already  reduced 
by  famine  and  disease  in  its  terrible  winter  march,  and 
Henry  with  double  his  numbers  at  once  attacked  him. 
But  in  spite  of  the  obstinate  courage  of  the  Castilian  troops 
the  discipline  and  skill  of  the  English  soldiers  once  more 
turned  the  wavering  day  into  a  victory.  Du  Guesclin  was 
taken,  Henry  fled  across  the  Pyrenees,  and  Pedro  was 
again  seated  on  his  throne.  The  pay  however  which  he 
had  promised  was  delayed  j  and  the  Prince,  whose  army 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  455 

■  ■  '  ™  ■■.■■.  -        .1  .I- .11  II,        1  ^ 

had  been  thinned  by  disease  to  a  fifth  of  its  numbers  and 
whose  strength  never  recovered  from  the  hardships  of  this 
campaign,  fell  back  sick  and  beggared  to  Aquitaine.  Ho 
had  hardly  returned  when  his  work  was  undone.  In  1368 
Henry  re-entered  Castillo ;  its  towns  threw  open  their  gates ; 
a  general  rising  chased  Pedro  from  the  throne,  and  a  final 
battle  in  the  spring  of  1369  saw  his  utter  overthrow.  His 
murder  by  Henry's  hand  left  the  bastard  undisputed  mas- 
ter of  Castillo.  Meanwhile  the  Black  Prince,  sick  and 
disheartened,  was  hampered  at  Bordeaux  by  the  expenses 
of  the  campaign  which  Pedro  had  left  unpaid.  To  defray 
his  debt  he  was  driven  in  1368  to  lay  a  hearth-tax  on  Aqui- 
taine, and  the  tax  served  as  a  pretext  for  an  outbreak  of 
the  long-hoarded  discontent.  Charles  was  now  ready  for 
open  action.  He  had  won  over  the  most  powerful  among 
the  Gascon  nobles,  and  their  influence  secured  the  rejection 
of  the  tax  in  a  Parliament  of  the  province  which  met  at 
Bordeaux.  The  Prince,  pressed  by  debt,  persisted  against 
the  counsel  of  his  wisest  advisers  in  exacting  it;  and  the 
lords  of  Aquitaine  at  once  appealed  to  the  King  of  France. 
Such  an  appeal  was  a  breach  of  the  treaty  of  Bretigny  in 
which  the  French  King  had  renounced  his  sovereignty  over 
the  south ;  but  Charles  had  craftily  delayed  year  after  year 
the  formal  execution  of  the  renunciations  stipulated  in  the 
treaty,  and  he  was  still  able  to  treat  it  as  not  binding  on 
him.  The  success  of  Henry  of  Trastamara  decided  him 
to  take  immediate  action,  and  in  1369  he  summoned  the 
Black  Prince  as  Duke  of  Aquitaine  to  meet  the  appeal  of 
the  Gascon  lords  in  his  court. 

The  Prince  was  maddened  by  the  summons.  "I  will 
come,"  he  replied,  "but  with  helmet  on  head,  and  with 
sixty  thousand  men  at  my  back."  War  however  had 
hardly  been  declared  when  the  ability  with  which  Charles 
had  laid  his  plans  was  seen  in  his  seizure  of  Ponthieu  and 
in  a  rising  of  the  whole  country  south  of  the  Garonne. 
Du  Guesclin  returned  in  1370  from  Spain  to  throw  life  into 
the  French  attack.     Two  armies  entered  Guienne  from  th? 


456  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


east ;  and  a  hundred  castles  with  La  Reole  and  Limoges 
threw  open  their  irates  to  Da  Guesclin.  But  the  march  of 
an  English  army  from  Calais  upon  Paris  recalled  him  from 
the  south  to  guard  the  capital  at  a  moment  when  the  Eng- 
lish leader  advanced  to  recover  Limoges,  and  the  Black 
Prince  borne  in  a  litter  to  its  walls  stormed  the  town  and 
sullied  by  a  merciless  massacre  of  its  inhabitants  the  fame 
of  his  earlier  exploits.  Sickness  however  recalled  him 
home  in  the  spring  of  1371;  and  the  war,  protracted  by 
the  caution  of  Charles  who  forbade  his  armies  to  engage, 
did  little  but  exhaust  the  energy  and  treasure  of  England, 
As  yet  indeed  the  French  attack  had  made  small  impres- 
sion on  the  south,  where  the  English  troops  stoutly  held 
their  ground  against  Du  Guesclin's  inroads.  But  the  pro- 
tracted war  drained  Edward's  resources,  while  the  diplo- 
macy of  Charles  was  busy  in  rousing  fresh  dangers  from 
Scotland  and  Castille.  It  was  in  vain  that  Edward  looked 
for  allies  to  the  Flemish  towns.  The  male  line  of  the 
Counts  of  Flanders  ended  in  Count  Louis  le  Male ;  and  the 
marriage  of  his  daughter  Margaret  with  Philip,  Duke  of 
Burgundy,  a  younger  brother  of  the  French  King,  secured 
Charles  from  attack  along  his  northern  border.  In  Scot- 
land the  death  of  David  Bruce  put  an  end  to  Edward's 
schemes  for  a  reunion  of  the  two  kingdoms;  and  his  suc- 
cessor, Robert  the  Steward,  renewed  in  1371  the  alliance 
with  France. 

Castille  was  a  yet  more  serious  danger;  and  an  effort 
which  Edward  made  to  neutralize  its  attack  only  forced 
Henry  of  Trastamara  to  fling  his  whole  weight  into  the 
struggle.  The  two  daughters  of  Pedro  had  remained  since 
their  father's  flight  at  Bordeaux.  The  elder  of  these  was 
now  wedded  to  John  of  Gaunt,  Edward's  fourth  son,  whom 
he  had  created  Duke  of  Lancaster  on  his  previous  marriage 
with  Blanche,  a  daughtei-  of  Henry  of  Lancaster  and  the 
heiress  of  that  house,  while  the  younger  was  wedded  to 
Edward's  fifth  son,  the  Earl  of  Cambridge.  Edward's 
aim  was  that  of  raising  again  the  party  of  King  Pedro  and 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  457 

giving  Henry  of  Trastamara  work  to  do  at  home  which 
would  hinder  his  interposition  in  the  war  of  Guienne.  It 
was  with  this  view  that  John  of  Gaunt  on  his  marriage 
took  the  title  of  King  of  Castille.  But  no  adherent  of 
Pedro's  cause  stirred  in  Spain,  and  Henry  replied  to  the 
challenge  by  sending  a  Spanish  fleet  to  the  Channel.  A 
decisive  victory  which  this  fleet  won  over  an  English  con- 
voy off  Rochelle  proved  a  fatal  blow  to  the  English  cause. 
It  wrested  from  Edward  the  mastery  of  the  seas,  and  cut 
off  all  communication  between  England  and  Guienne. 
Charles  was  at  once  roused  to  new  exertions.  Poitou, 
Saintonge,  and  the  Angoumois  yielded  to  his  general 
Du  Guesclin ;  and  Rochelle  was  surrendered  by  its  citizens 
in  1372.  The  next  year  saw  a  desperate  attempt  to  restore 
the  fortune  of  the  English  arms.  A  great  army  under 
John  of  Gaunt  penetrated  into  the  heart  of  France.  But 
it  found  no  foe  to  engage.  Charles  had  forbidden  any 
fighting.  "  If  a  storm  rages  over  the  land,"  said  the  King 
coolly,  "it  disperses  of  itself;  and  so  will  it  be  with  the 
English."  Winter  in  fact  overtook  the  Duke  of  Lancaster 
in  the  mountains  of  Auvergne,  and  a  mere  fragment  of 
his  host  reached  Bordeaux.  The  failure  of  this  attack 
was  the  signal  for  a  general  defection,  and  ere  the  summer 
of  1374  had  closed  the  two  towns  of  Bordeaux  and  Ba^'onne 
were  all  that  remained  of  the  English  possessions  in  South- 
ern France.  Even  these  were  only  saved  by  the  exhaus- 
tion of  the  conquerors.  The  treasury  of  Charles  was  as 
utterly  drained  as  the  treasury  of  Edward;  and  the  Kings 
were  forced  to  a  truce. 

Only  fourteen  years  had  gone  by  since  the  Treaty  of 
Bretigny  raised  England  to  a  height  of  glory  such  as  it 
had  never  known  before.  But  the  years  had  been  years  of 
a  shame  and  suffering  which  stung  the  people  to  mad- 
ness. Never  had  England  fallen  so  low.  Her  conquests 
were  lost,  her  shores  insulted,  her  commerce  swept  from 
the  seas.  Within  she  was  drained  by  the  taxation  and 
bloodshed  of  the  war.     Its  popularity  had  wholly  died 


458  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

away.  When  the  Commons  were  asked  in  1354  whether 
they  would  assent  to  a  treaty  of  perpetual  peace  if  they 
might  have  it,  "  the  said  Commons  responded  all,  and  all 
together,  'Yes,  j^es!'"  The  population  was  thinned  by 
the  ravages  of  pestilence,  for  till  1369,  which  saw  its  last 
visitation,  the  Black  Death  returned  again  and  again. 
The  social  strife  too  gathered  bitterness  with  every  effort 
at  repression.  It  was  in  vain  that  Parliament  after  Par- 
liament increased  the  severity  of  its  laws.  The  demands 
of  the  Parliament  of  1376  show  how  inoperative  the  previ- 
ous Statutes  of  Laborers  had  proved.  They  prayed  that 
constables  be  directed  to  arrest  all  who  infringed  the  Stat- 
ute, that  no  laborer  should  be  allowed  to  take  refuge  in  a 
town  and  become  an  artisan  if  there  were  need  of  his  ser- 
vice in  the  county  from  which  he  came,  and  that  the 
King  would  protect  lords  and  employers  against  the  threats 
of  death  uttered  by  serfs  who  refused  to  serve.  The  reply 
of  the  royal  Council  shows  that  statesmen  at  any  rate  were 
beginning  to  feel  that  repression  might  be  pushed  too  far. 
The  King  refused  to  interfere  by  any  further  and  harsher 
provisions  between  employers  and  employed,  and  left  cases 
of  breach  of  law  to  be  dealt  with  in  his  ordinary  courts  of 
justice.  On  the  one  side  he  forbade  the  threatening  gather- 
ings which  were  already  common  in  the  country,  but  on 
the  other  he  forbade  the  illegal  exactions  of  the  employers. 
With  such  a  reply,  however,  the  proprietary  class  were 
hardly  likely  to  be  content.  Two  years  later  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Gloucester  called  for  a  Fugitive-slave  Law,  which 
would  have  enabled  lords  to  seize  their  serfs  in  whatever 
county  or  town  they  found  refuge,  and  in  1379  they 
prayed  that  judges  might  be  sent  five  times  a  year  into 
every  shire  to  enforce  the  Statute  of  Laborers. 

But  the  strife  between  employers  and  employed  was  not 
the  only  rift  which  was  opening  in  the  social  structure. 
Suffering  and  defeat  had  stripped  off  the  veil  which  hid 
from  the  nation  the  shallow  and  selfish  temper  of  Edward 
the  Third.     His  profligacy  was  now  bringing  him  to  a 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIA3IENT.     1307—1461.       '  45iy 

premature  old  age.  He  was  sinking  into  the  tool  of  his 
ministers  and  his  mistresses.  The  glitter  and  profusion 
of  his  court,  his  splendid  tournaments,  his  feasts,  his  Table 
Round,  his  new  order  of  chivalry,  the  exquisite  chapel  of 
St.  Stephen  whose  frescoed  walls  were  the  glory  of  his 
palace  at  Westminster,  the  vast  keep  which  crowned  the 
hill  of  Windsor,  had  ceased  to  throw  their  glamour  round 
a  King  who  tricked  his  Parliament  and  swindled  his 
creditors.  Edward  paid  no  debts.  He  had  ruined  the 
wealthiest  bankers  of  Florence  by  a  cool  act  of  bankruptcy. 
The  sturdier  Flemish  burghers  only  wrested  payment  from 
him  by  holding  his  royal  person  as  their  security.  His 
own  subjects  fared  no  better  than  foreigners.  The  pre- 
rogative of  "  purveyance"  by  which  the  King  in  his  prog- 
resses through  the  country  had  the  right  of  first  purchase 
of  all  that  he  needed  at  fair  market  price  became  a  galling 
oppression  in  the  hands  of  a  bankrupt  King  who  was  al- 
ways moving  from  place  to  place.  "  When  men  hear  of 
your  coming,"  Archbishop  Islip  wrote  to  Edward,  "every- 
body at  once  for  sheer  fear  sets  about  hiding  or  eating  or 
getting  rid  of  their  geese  and  chickens  or  other  possessions 
that  they  may  not  utterly  lose  them  through  j'our  arrival. 
The  purveyors  and  servants  of  your  court  seize  on  men  and 
horses  in  the  midst  of  their  field  work.  They  seize  on  the 
very  bullocks  that  are  at  plough  or  at  sowing,  and  force 
them  to  work  for  two  or  three  days  at  a  time  without  a 
penny  of  payment.  It  is  no  wonder  that  men  make  dole 
and  murmur  at  your  approach,  for,  as  the  truth  is  in  God, 
I  myself,  whenever  I  hear  a  rumor  of  it,  be  I  at  home  or 
in  chapter  or  in  church  or  at  study,  nay  if  I  am  saying 
mass,  even  I  in  my  own  person  tremble  in  every  limb." 
But  these  irregular  exactions  were  little  beside  the  steady 
pressure  of  taxation.  Even  in  the  years  of  peace  fifteenths 
and  tenths,  subsidies  on  wool  and  subsidies  on  leather, 
were  demanded  and  obtained  from  Parliament ;  and  witli 
the  outbreak  of  war  the  royal  demands  became  heavier  and 
more  frequent.     As  failure  followed  failure  the  expenses 


460  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


of  each  campaign  increased :  an  ineffectual  attempt  to  re- 
lieve Rochelle  cost  nearly  a  million;  the  march  of  John  of 
Gaunt  through  France  utterly  drained  the  royal  treasury. 
Nor  were  these  legal  supplies  all  that  the  King  drew  from 
the  nation.  He  had  repudiated  his  pledge  to  abstain  from 
arbitrary  taxation  of  imports  and  exports.  He  sold  mo- 
nopolies to  the  merchants  in  exchange  for  increased  cus- 
toms. He  wrested  supplies  from  the  clergy  by  arrange- 
ments with  the  bishops  or  the  Pope.  There  were  signs 
that  Edward  was  longing  to  rid  himself  of  the  control  of 
Parliament  altogether.  The  power  of  the  Houses  seemed 
indeed  as  high  as  ever;  great  statutes  were  passed.  Those 
of  Provisors  and  Praemunire  settled  the  relations  of  Eng- 
land to  the  Roman  Court.  That  of  Treason  in  1352  de- 
fined that  crime  and  its  penalties.  That  of  the  Staples  in 
1353  regulated  the  conditions  of  foreign  trade  and  the 
privileges  of  the  merchant  guilds  which  conducted  it.  But 
side  by  side  with  these  exertions  of  influence  we  note  a 
series  of  steady  encroachments  by  the  Crown  on  the  power 
of  the  Houses.  If  their  petitions  were  granted,  they  were 
often  altered  in  the  royal  ordinance  which  professed  to 
embody  them.  A  plan  of  demanding  supplies  for  three 
years  at  once  rendered  the  annual  assembly  of  Parliameni 
less  necessary.  Its  very  existence  was  threatened  by  the 
convocation  in  1352  and  1353  of  occasional  councils  with 
but  a  single  knight  from  every  shire  and  a  single  burgess 
from  a  small  number  of  the  greater  towns,  which  acted  as 
Parliament  and  granted  subsidies. 

What  aided  Edward  above  all  in  eluding  or  defying 
the  constitutional  restrictions  on  arbitrary  taxation,  as  well 
as  in  these  more  insidious  attempts  to  displace  the  Parlia- 
ment, was  the  lessening  of  the  check  which  the  Baronage 
and  the  Church  had  till  now  supplied.  The  same  causes 
which  had  long  been  reducing  the  number  of  the  greater 
lords  who  formed  the  upper  house  went  steadily  on. 
Under  Edward  the  Second  little  more  than  seventy  were 
commonly  summoned   to   Parliament;    little   more   than 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  461 

forty  were  summoned  under  Edward  the  Third,  and  of  these 
the  bulk  were  now  bound  to  the  Crown,  partly  by  their 
employment  on  its  service,  partly  bj^  their  interest  in  the 
continuance  of  the  war.  The  heads  of  the  Baronage  too 
were  members  of  the  royal  family.  Edward  had  carried 
out  on  "a  far  wider  scale  than  before  the  policy  which  had 
been  more  or  less  adhered  to  from  the  daj's  of  Henry  the 
Third,  that  of  gathering  up  in  the  hands  of  the  royal  house 
all  the  greater  heritages  of  the  land.  The  Black  Prince  was 
married  to  Joan  of  Kent,  the  heiress  of  Edward  the  First's 
younger  son.  Earl  Edmund  of  Woodstock.  His  marriage 
with  the  heiress  of  the  Earl  of  Ulster  brought  to  the  King's 
second  son,  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  a  great  part  of  the 
possessions  of  the  de  Burghs.  Later  on  the  possessions  of 
the  house  of  Bohun  passed  by  like  matches  to  his  youngest 
son,  Thomas  of  Woodstock,  and  to  his  grandson  Henry  of 
Lancaster.  But  the  greatest  English  heritage  fell  to  Ed- 
ward's third  living  son,  John  of  Gaunt,  as  he  was  called 
from  his  birth  at  Ghent  during  his  father's  Flemish  cam- 
paign. Originally  created  Earl  of  Richmond,  the  death 
of  his  father-in-law,  Henry  of  Lancaster,  and  of  Henry's 
eldest  daughter,  raised  John  in  his  wife's  right  to  the 
Dukedom  of  Lancaster  and  the  Earldoms  of  Derby,  Leices- 
ter, and  Lincoln.  But  while  the  baronage  were  thus  bound 
to  the  Crown,  they  drifted  more  and  more  into  a  hostility 
with  the  Church  which  in  time  disabled  the  clergy  from 
acting  as  a  check  on  it.  What  rent  the  ruling  classes  in 
twain  was  the  growing  pressure  of  the  war.  The  nobles 
and  knighthood  of  the  country,  already  half  ruined  by  the 
rise  in  the  labor  market  and  the  attitude  of  the  peasantry, 
were  pressed  harder  than  ever  by  the  repeated  subsidies 
which  were  called  for  by  the  continuance  of  the  struggle. 
In  the  hour  of  their  distress  they  cast  their  eyes  greedily 
— as  in  the  Norman  and  Angevin  days — on  the  riches  of 
the  Church.  Never  had  her  wealth  been  gi-eater.  Out  of 
a  population  of  some  three  millions  the  ecclesiastics  num- 
bered between  twenty  and  thirty  thousand.     Wild  tales 


462  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV, 

of  their  riches  floated  about  the  country.  They  were  said 
to  own  in  landed  property  alone  more  than  a  third  of  the 
soil,  while  their  "spiritualities"  in  dues  and  offerings 
amounted  to  twice  the  King's  revenue.  Exaggerated  as 
such  statements  were,  the  wealth  of  the  Church  was  really 
great ;  but  even  more  galling  to  the  nobles  was  its  influence 
in  the  royal  councils.  The  feudal  baronage,  flushed  with 
a  now  pride  by  its  victories  at  Cregy  and  Poitiers,  looked 
with  envy  and  wrath  at  the  throng  of  bishops  around  the 
council-board,  and  attributed  to  their  love  of  peace  the 
errors  and  sluggishness  which  had  caused,  as  they  held, 
the  disasters  of  the  war.  To  rob  the  Church  of  wealth 
and  of  power  became  the  aim  of  a  great  baronial  party. 

The  efforts  of  the  baronage  indeed  would  have  been 
fruitless  had  the  spiritual  power  of  the  Church  remained 
as  of  old.  But  the  clergy  were  rent  by  their  own  dissen- 
sions. The  higher  prelates  were  busy  with  the  cares  of 
political  office,  and  severed  from  the  lower  priesthood  by 
the  scandalous  inequality  between  the  revenues  of  the 
wealthier  ecclesiastics  and  the  "  poor  parson"  of  the  coun- 
try. A  bitter  hatred  divided  the  secular  clergy  from  the 
regular ;  and  this  strife  went  fiercely  on  in  the  Universi- 
ties. Fitz-Ralf,  the  Chancellor  of  Oxford,  attributed  to 
the  friars  the  decline  which  was  already  being  felt  in  the 
number  of  academical  students,  and  the  University  checked 
by  statute  their  practice  of  admitting  mere  children  into 
their  order.  The  clergy  too  at  large  shared  in  the  discredit 
and  unpopularity  of  the  Papacy.  Though  they  suffered 
more  than  any  other  class  from  the  exactions  of  Avignon, 
they  were  bound  more  and  more  to  the  Papal  cause.  The 
very  statutes  which  would  have  protected  them  were  prac- 
tically set  aside  by  the  treacherous  diplomacy  of  the  Crown. 
At  home  and  abroad  the  Roman  see  was  too  useful  for  the 
King  to  come  to  any  actual  breach  with  it.  However 
much  Edward  might  echo  the  bold  words  of  his  Parlia- 
ment, he  shrank  from  an  open  contest  which  would  have 
added  the  Papacy  to  his  many  foes,  and  which  would  at 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLLOIENT.     1307—1461.  4G3 


the  same  time  have  robbed  him  of  his  most  effective  means 
of  wresting  aids  from  the  English  clergy  by  private  ar- 
rangement with  the  Roman  court.  Rome  indeed  was 
brought  to  waive  its  alleged  right  of  appointing  foreigners 
to  English  livings.  But  a  compromise  was  arranged  be- 
tween the  Pope  and  the  Crown  in  which  both  united  in  the 
spoliation  and  enslavement  of  the  Church.  The  voice  of 
chapters,  of  monks,  of  ecclesiastical  patrons,  went  hence- 
forth for  nothing  in  the  election  of  bishops  or  abbots  or 
the  nomination  to  livings  in  the  gift  of  churchmen.  The 
Crown  recommended  those  whom  it  chose  to  the  Pope,  and 
the  Pope  nominated  them  to  see  or  cure  of  souls.  The 
treasuries  of  both  King  and  Pope  profited  by  the  arrange- 
ment ;  but  we  can  hardly  wonder  that  after  a  betrayal  such 
as  this  the  clergy  placed  little  trust  in  statutes  or  royal 
protection,  and  bowed  humbly  before  the  claims  of  Rome. 
But  what  weakened  the  clergy  most  was  their  severance 
from  the  general  sj'mpathies  of  the  nation,  their  selfish- 
ness and  the  worldliness  of  their  temper.  Immense  as 
their  wealth  was,  they  bore  as  little  as  they  could  of  the 
common  burdens  of  the  realm.  They  were  still  resolute 
to  assert  their  exemption  from  the  common  justice  of  the 
land,  though  the  mild  punishments  of  the  bishops'  courts 
carried  as  little  dismay  as  ever  into  the  mass  of  disorderly 
clerks.  But  privileged  as  they  thus  held  themselves 
against  all  interference  from  the  lay  world  without  them, 
they  carried  on  a  ceaseless  interference  with  the  affairs  of 
this  lay  world  through  their  control  over  wills,  contracts, 
and  divorces.  No  figure  was  better  known  or  more  hated 
that  the  summoner  who  enforced  the  jurisdiction  and  levied 
the  dues  of  their  courts.  By  their  directly  religious  offices 
they  penetrated  into  the  very  heart  of  the  social  life  about 
them.  But  powerful  as  they  were,  their  moral  authority 
was  fast  passing  away.  The  wealthier  churchmen  with 
their  curled  hair  and  hanging  sleeves  aped  the  costume  of 
the  knightly  society  from  which  they  were  drawn  and  to 
which  they  still  really  belonged.     We  see  the  general  im- 


464  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


pression  of  their  worldliness  in  Chaucer's  pictures  of  the 
hunting  monk  and  the  courtly  prioress  with  her  love-motto 
on  her  brooch.  The  older  religious  orders  in  fact  had  sunk 
into  mere  landowners,  while  the  enthusiasm  of  the  friars 
had  in  great  part  died  away  and  left  a  crowd  of  impudent 
mendicants  behind  it.  Wyclif  could  soon  with  general 
applause  denounce  them  as  sturdy  beggars,  and  declare 
that  "  the  man  who  gives  alms  to  a  begging  friar  is  ipso 
facto  excommunicate. " 

It  was  this  weakness  of  the  Baronage  and  the  Chm*ch, 
and  the  consequent  withdrawal  of  both  as  represented  in 
the  temporal  and  spiritual  Estates  of  the  Upper  House 
from  the  active  part  which  they  had  taken  till  now  in 
checking  the  Crown,  that  brought  the  Lower  House  to  the 
front.  The  Knight  of  the  Shire  was  now  finally  joined 
with  the  Burgess  of  the  Town  to  form  the  Third  Estate  of 
the  realm :  and  this  union  of  the  trader  and  the  country 
gentleman  gave  a  vigor  and  weight  to  the  action  of  the 
Commons  which  their  House  could  never  have  acquired 
had  it  remained  as  elsewhere  a  mere  gathering  of  bur- 
gesses. But  it  was  only  slowly  and  under  the  pressure  of 
one  necessity  after  another  that  the  Commons  took  a  grow- 
ing part  in  public  affairs.  Their  primarj^'  business  waa 
with  taxation,  and  here  they  stood  firm  against  the  eva- 
sions  by  which  the  King  still  managed  to  baffle  their  ex- 
clusive right  of  granting  supplies  by  voluntary  agreements 
with  the  merchants  of  the  Staple.  Their  steady  pressure 
at  last  obtained  in  1362  an  enactment  that  no  subsidy 
should  henceforth  be  set  upon  wool  without  assent  of  Par- 
liament, while  Purveyance  was  restricted  by  a  provision 
that  payments  should  be  made  for  all  things  taken  for  the 
King's  use  in  ready  money.  A  hardly  less  important  ad- 
vance was  made  by  the  change  of  Ordinances  into  Statutes. 
Till  this  time,  even  when  a  petition  of  the  Houses  waa 
granted,  the  royal  Council  had  reserved  to  itself  the  right 
of  modifying  its  form  in  the  Ordinance  which  professed 
to  embody  it.     It  was  under  color  of  this  right  that  so 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PAELIAMENT     1307—1461.  465 


many  of  the  provisions  made  in  Parliament  had  hitherto 
been  evaded  or  set  aside.  But  the  Commons  now  met  this 
abuse  by  a  demand  that  on  the  royal  assent  being  given 
their  petitions  should  be  turned  without  change  into  Stat- 
utes of  the  Realm  and  derive  force  of  law  from  their  entry 
on  the  Rolls  of  Parliament.  The  same  practical  sense  was 
seen  in  their  dealings  with  Edward's  attempt  to  introduce 
occasional  smaller  councils  with  parliamentary  powers. 
Such  an  assembly  in  1353  granted  a  subsidy  on  wool.  The 
Parliament  which  met  in  the  following  year  might  have 
challenged  its  proceedings  as  null  and  void,  but  the  Com- 
mons more  wisely  contented  themselves  with  a  demand 
that  the  ordinances  passed  in  the  preceding  assembly 
should  receive  the  sanction  of  the  Three  Estates.  A  prece- 
dent for  evil  was  thus  turned  into  a  precedent  for  good,  and 
though  irregular  gatherings  of  a  like  sort  were  for  a  while 
occasionally  held  they  were  soon  seen  to  be  fruitless  and 
discontinued.  But  the  Commons  long  shrank  from  med- 
dling with  purely  administrative  matters.  When  Edward 
in  his  anxiety  to  shift  from  himself  the  responsibility  of 
the  war  referred  to  them  in  1354  for  advice  on  one  of  the 
numerous  propositions  of  peace,  they  referred  him  to  the 
lords  of  his  Council.  "Most  dreaded  lord,"  they  replied, 
"  as  to  this  war  and  the  equipment  needful  for  it  we  are 
so  ignorant  and  simple  that  we  know  not  how  nor  have 
the  power  to  devise.  Wherefore  we  pray  your  Grace  to 
'  excuse  us  in  this  matter,  and  that  it  please  you  with  the 
advice  of  the  great  and  wise  persons  of  your  Council  to 
ordain  what  seems  best  for  you  for  the  honor  and  profit  of 
yourself  and  of  your  kingdom.  And  whatsoever  shall  be 
thus  ordained  by  assent  and  agreement  on  the  part  of  you 
and  your  Lords  we  readily  assent  to  and  will  hold  it  firmly 
established." 

But  humble  as  was  their  tone  the  growing  power  of  the 
Commons  showed  itself  in  significant  changes.     In  1363 
the  Chancellor  opened  Parliament  with  a  speech  in  Eng- 
lish, no  doubt  as  a  tongue  intelligible  to  the  members  of 
Vol.  I.— 30 


466  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

the  Lower  House.  From  a  petition  in  loTe  that  knights 
of  the  shire  may  be  chosen  by  common  election  of  the 
better  folk  of  the  shire  and  not  merely  nominated  by 
the  sheriff  without  due  election,  as  well  as  from  an  earlier 
demand  that  the  sheriffs  themselves  shovild  be  disqualified 
from  serving  in  Parliament  during  their  term  of  oflfice, 
we  see  that  the  Crown  had  already  begun  not  only  to  feel 
the  pressure  of  the  Commons  but  to  meet  it  by  foisting 
royal  nominees  on  the  constituencies.  Such  an  attempt 
at  packing  the  House  would  hardly  have  been  resorted  to 
had  it  not  already  proved  too  strong  for  direct  control.  A 
further  proof  of  its  influence  was  seen  in  a  prayer  of  the 
Parliament  that  lawyers  practising  in  the  King's  courts 
might  no  longer  be  eligible  as  knights  of  the  shire.  The 
petition  marks  the  rise  of  a  consciousness  that  the  House 
was  now  no  mere  gathering  of  local  representatives  but  a 
national  assembly,  and  that  a  seat  in  it  could  no  longer  be 
confined  to  dwellers  within  the  bounds  of  this  county  or 
that.  But  it  showed  also  a  pressure  for  seats,  a  passing 
away  of  the  old  dread  of  being  returned  as  a  representa- 
tive and  a  new  ambition  to  gain  a  place  among  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Commons.  Whether  they  would  or  no  indeed 
the  Commons  were  driven  forward  to  a  more  direct  inter- 
ference with  public  affairs.  From  the  memorable  statute 
of  1322  their  right  to  take  equal  part  in  all  matters  brought 
before  Parliament  had  been  incontestable,  and  their  waiver 
of  much  of  this  right  faded  away  before  the  stress  of  time. 
Their  assent  was  needed  to  the  great  ecclesiastical  statutes 
which  regulated  the  relation  of  the  see  of  Rome  to  the 
realm.  They  naturally  took  a  chief  part  in  the  enactment 
and  re-enactment  of  the  Statute  of  Laborers.  The  Statute 
of  the  Staple,  with  the  host  of  smaller  commercial  and 
economical  measures,  were  of  their  origination.  But  it 
was  not  till  an  open  breach  took  place  between  the  baron- 
age and  the  prelates  that  their  full  weight  was  felt.  In 
the  Parliament  of  1371,  on  the  resumption  of  the  war,  a 
noble  taunted  the  Church  as  an  owl  protected  by  the 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     130T— 14G1.  467 

— —  -      --    -  -  .  .     _  - 

feathers  which  other  birds  had  contributed,  and  which  they 
had  a  right  to  resume  Vv- hen  a  hawk's  approach  threatened 
them.  The  worldly  goods  of  the  Church,  the  metaphor 
hinted,  had  been  bestowed  on  it  for  the  common  weal,  and 
could  be  taken  from  it  on  the  coming  of  a  common  danger. 
The  threat  was  followed  by  a  prayer  that  the  chief  offices 
of  state,  which  had  till  now^  been  held  by  the  leading  bish- 
ops, might  be  placed  in  lay  hands.  The  prayer  was  at 
once  granted :  William  of  Wykeham,  Bishop  of  Winches- 
ter, resigned  the  Chancellorship,  another  prelate  the  Treas- 
ury, to  lay  dependents  of  the  great  nobles ;  and  the  panic 
of  the  clerg}''  was  seen  in  large  grants  which  were  voted 
by  both  Convocations. 

At  the  moment  of  their  triumph  the  assailants  of  the 
Church  found  a  leader  in  John  of  Gaunt.  The  Duke  of 
Lancaster  now  wielded  the  actual  power  of  the  Crown, 
Edward  himself  was  sinking  into  dotage.  Of  his  sons  the 
Black  Prince,  who  had  never  rallied  from  the  hardships  of 
his  Spanish  campaign,  was  fast  drawing  to  the  grave ;  he 
had  lost  a  second  son  b}^  death  in  childhood ;  the  third, 
Lionel  of  Clarence,  had  died  in  1368.  It  was  his  fourth 
son,  therefore,  John  of  Gaunt,  to  whom  the  royal  power 
mainly  fell.  By  his  marriage  with  the  heiress  of  the  house 
of  Lancaster  the  Duke  had  acquired  lands  and  wealth,  but 
he  had  no  taste  for  the  policy  of  the  Lancastrian  house  or 
for  acting  as  leader  of  the  barons  in  any  constitutional  re- 
sistance to  the  Crown.  His  pride,  already  quickened  by 
the  second  match  with  Constance  to  which  he  ow^ed  his 
shadowy  kingship  of  Castille,  drew  him  to  the  throne; 
and  the  fortune  which  placed  the  royal  power  practically 
in  his  hands  bound  him  only  the  more  firmly  to  its  cause. 
Men  held  that  his  ambition  looked  to  the  Crown  itself,  for 
the  approaching  death  of  Edward  and  the  Prince  of  Wales 
left  but  a  boy,  Richard,  the  son  of  the  Black  Prince,  a 
child  of  but  a  few  years  old,  and  a  girl,  the  daughter  of 
the  Duke  of  Clarence,  between  John  and  the  throne.  But 
the  Duke's  success  fell  short  of  his  pride.     In  the  cam- 


4C)8  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

paign  of  1373  he  traversed  France  without  finding  a  foe 
and  brought  back  nothing  save  a  ruined  army  to  English 
shores.  The  peremptory  tone  in  which  money  was  de- 
manded for  the  cost  of  this  fruitless  march  while  the  peti- 
tions of  the  Parliament  were  set  aside  till  it  was  granted 
roused  the  temper  of  the  Commons.  They  requested — it 
is  the  first  instance  of  such  a  practice — a  conference  with 
the  lords,  and  while  granting  fresh  subsidies  prayed  that 
the  grant  should  be  spent  only  on  the  war.  The  resent- 
ment of  the  government  at  this  advance  toward  a  control 
over  the  actual  management  of  public  affairs  was  seen  in 
the  calling  of  no  Parliament  through  the  next  two  years. 
But  the  years  were  disastrous  both  at  home  and  abroad. 
The  war  went  steadily  against  the  English  arms.  The 
long  negotiations  with  the  Pope  which  went  on  at  Bruges 
through  1375,  and  in  which  Wyclif  took  part  as  one  of  the 
royal  commissioners,  ended  in  a  compromise  by  which 
Rome  yielded  nothing.  The  strife  over  the  Statute  of 
Laborers  grew  fiercer  and  fiercer,  and  a  return  of  the 
plague  heightened  the  public  distress.  Edward  was  now 
wholly  swayed  by  Alice  Perrers,  and  the  Duke  shared 
his  power  with  the  royal  mistress.  But  if  we  gather  its 
tenor  from  the  complaints  of  the  succeeding  Parliament 
his  administration  was  as  weak  as  it  was  corrupt.  The 
new  lay  ministers  lent  themselves  to  gigantic  frauds.  The 
chamberlain,  Lord  Latimer,  bought  up  the  royal  debts  and 
embezzled  the  public  revenue.  With  Richard  Lyons,  a 
merchant  through  whom  the  King  negotiated  with  the 
guild  of  the  Staple,  he  reaped  enormous  profits  by  raising 
the  price  of  imports  and  by  lending  to  the  Crown  at 
usurious  rates  of  interest.  Whan  the  empty  treasury 
forced  them  to  call  a  Parliament  the  ministers  tampered 
with  the  elections  through  the  sheriffs. 

But  the  temper  of  the  Parliament  which  met  in  1376, 
and  which  gained  from  after-times  the  name  of  the  Good 
Parliament,  shows  that  these  precautions  had  utterly 
failed.     Even  their  promise  to  pillage  the  Church  had 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  469 

>■  ■■  ■  ■  I  Ml  —11  I—— -I  —■■■■■I  ■  !■-  ■  ■■■■1^1.  .■■■■^■■■i  ■  I  ■■■,■■■ 

failed  to  win  for  the  Duke  and  his  party  the  good  will  of 
the  lesser  gentry  or  the  wealthier  burgesses  who  together 
formed  the  Commons.  Projects  of  wide  constitutional 
and  social  change,  of  the  humiliation  and  impoverishment 
of  an  estate  of  the  realm,  were  profound^  distasteful  to 
men  already  struggling  with  a  social  revolution  on  their 
own  estates  and  in  their  own  workshops.  But  it  was  not 
merely  its  opposition  to  the  projects  of  Lancaster  and  his 
party  among  the  baronage  which  won  for  this  assembly  the 
name  of  the  Good  Parliament.  Its  action  marked  a  new 
period  in  our  Parliamentary  history,  as  it  marks  a  new 
stage  in  the  character  of  the  national  position  to  the  mis- 
rule of  the  Crown.  Hitherto  the  task  of  resistance  had 
developed  on  the  baronage,  and  had  been  carried  out 
through  risings  of  its  feudal  tenantry-.  But  the  misgov- 
emment  was  now  that  of  the  baronage  or  of  a  main  part 
of  the  baronage  itself  in  actual  conjunction  with  the 
Crown.  Only  in  the  power  of  the  Commons  lay  any  ade- 
quate means  of  peaceful  redress.  The  old  reluctance  of 
the  Lower  House  to  meddle  with  matters  of  State  was 
roughly  swept  away  therefore  by  the  pressure  of  the  time. 
The  Black  Prince,  anxious  to  secure  his  child's  succession 
by  the  removal  of  John  of  Gaunt,  the  prelates  with  Wil- 
liam of  Wykeham  at  their  head,  resolute  again  to  take 
their  place  in  the  royal  councils  and  to  check  the  projects 
of  ecclesiastical  spoliation  put  forward  by  their  opponents, 
alike  found  in  it  a  body  to  oppose  to  the  Duke's  adminis- 
tration. Backed  by  powers  such  as  these  the  action  of  the 
Commons  showed  none  of  their  old  timidit)^  or  self-dis- 
trust. The  presentation  of  a  hundred  and  sixty  petitions 
of  grievances  preluded  a  bold  attack  on  the  royal  Council. 
"  Trusting  in  God,  and  standing  with  his  followers  before 
the  nobles,  whereof  the  chief  was  John  Duke  of  Lancas- 
ter, whose  doings  were  ever  contrary,"  their  speaker,  Sir 
Peter  de  la  Mare,  denounced  the  mismanagement  of  the 
war,  the  oppressive  taxation,  and  demanded  an  account  of 
the    expenditure.       "What    do  these  base  and   ignoble 


470  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

kin  gilts  attempt?"  cried  John  of  Gaunt.  "Do  they  think 
tliey  be  kings  or  princes  of  the  land?"  But  the  movement 
was  too  strong  to  be  stayed.  Even  the  Duke  was  silenced 
bj-  the  charges  brought  against  the  ministers.  After  a 
strict  inquiry  Latimer  and  Lyons  w^ere  alike  thrown  into 
prison,  Alice  Ferrers  was  banished,  and  several  of  the 
royal  servants  were  driven  from  the  Court.  At  this  mo- 
ment the  death  of  the  Black  Prince  shook  the  power  of  the 
Parliament.  But  it  only  heightened  its  resolve  to  secure 
the  succession.  His  son,  Richard  of  Bordeaux,  as  he  was 
called  from  the  place  of  his  birth,  was  now  a  child  of  but 
ten  years  old ;  and  it  was  known  that  doubts  were  whis- 
pered on  the  legitimacy  of  his  birth  and  claim.  An  early 
marriage  of  his  mother  Joan  of  Kent,  a  granddaughter  of 
Edward  the  First,  with  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  had  been 
annulled ;  but  the  Lancastrian  party  used  this  first  match 
to  throw  doubts  on  the  validity  of  her  subsequent  union 
with  the  Black  Prince  and  on  the  right  of  Richard  to  the 
throne.  The  dread  of  Lancaster's  ambition  is  the  first 
indication  of  the  approach  of  what  was  from  this  time  to 
grow  into  the  great  difficulty  of  the  realm,  the  question  of 
the  succession  to  the  Crown.  From  the  death  of  Edward 
the  Third  to  the  death  of  Charles  the  First  no  English 
sovereign  felt  himself  secure  from  rival  claimants  of  his 
throne.  As  yet,  however,  the  dread  was  a  baseless  one ; 
the  people  were  heartily  with  the  Prince  and  his  child. 
The  Duke's  proposal  that  the  succession  should  be  settled 
in  case  of  Richard's  death  was  rejected;  and  the  boy  him- 
self was  brought  into  Parliament  and  acknowledged  as 
heir  of  the  Crown. 

To  secure  their  work  the  Commons  ended  by  obtaining 
the  addition  of  nine  lords  with  William  of  Wykeham  and 
two  other  prelates  among  them  to  the  royal  Council.  But 
the  Parliament  was  no  sooner  dismissed  than  the  Duke  at 
once  resumed  his  power.  His  anger  at  the  blow  which 
had  been  dealt  at  his  projects  was  no  doubt  quickened  by 
resentment  at  the  sudden  advance  of  the  Lower  House. 


Ghap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  471 


From  the  Commons  who  shrank  even  from  giving  counsel 
on  matters  of  state  to  the  Commons  who  dealt  with  such 
matters  as  their  special  business,  who  investigated  royal 
accounts,  who  impeached  royal  ministers,  who  dictated 
changes  in  the  royal  advisers,  was  an  immense  step.     But 
it  was  a  step  which  the  Duke  believed  could  be  retraced. 
His  haughty  will  flung  aside  all  restraints  of  law.     He 
idismissed  the  new  lords  and  prelates  from  the  Council. 
He  called  back  Alice  Ferrers  and  the  disgraced  ministers. 
He  declared  the  Good  Parliament  no  parliament,  and  did 
not  suffer  its  petitions  to  be  enrolled  as  statutes.     He  im- 
prisoned Peter  de  la  Mare,  and  confiscated  the  possessions 
of  William  of  Wykeham.     His  attack  on  this  prelate  was 
an  attack  on  the  clergy  at  large,  and  the  attack  became 
significant  when  the  Duke  gave  his  open  patronage  to  the 
denunciations  of  Church  property   which  formed  the  fa- 
vorite theme  of  John  Wyclif.     To  Wyclif  such  a  prelate 
as  Wykeham  symbolized  the  evil  which  held  down  the 
Church.     His  administrative  ability,  his  political  energy, 
his  wealth  and  the  colleges  at  Winchester  and  at  Oxford 
which  it  enabled  him  to  raise  before  his  death,  were  all 
equally  hateful.     It  was  this  wealth,  this  intermeddling 
with  worldly  business,  which  the  ascetic  reformer  looked 
upon  as  the  curse  that  robbed  prelates  and  churchmen  of 
that  spiritual  authority  which  could  alone  meet  the  vice 
and  suffering  of  the  time.     Whatever  baser  motives  might 
spur  Lancaster  and  his  party,  their  projects  of  spoliation 
must  have  seemed  to  Wyclif  projects  of  enfranchisement 
for  the  Church.     Poor  and  powerless  in  worldly  matters, 
he  held  that  she  would  have  the  wealth  and  might  of 
heaven  at  her  command.     Wyclif's  theory  of  Church  and 
State  had  led  him  long  since  to  contend  that  the  property 
of  the  clergy  might  be  seized  and  employed  like  other 
property  for  national  purposes.     Such  a  theory  might  have 
been  left,  as  other  daring  theories  of  the  schoolmen  had 
been  left,  to  the  disputation  of  the  schools.     But  the  clergy 
were  bitterly  galled  when  the  first  among  English  teachers 


472  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


threw  himself  hotly  on  the  side  of  the  party  which  threat- 
ened them  with  spoliation,  and  argued  in  favor  of  their 
voluntary  abandonment  of  all  Church  property  and  of  a 
return  to  their  original  poverty.  They  were  roused  to 
action  when  Wyclif  came  forward  as  the  theological  bul- 
wark of  the  Lancastrian  party  at  a  moment  when  the 
clergy  were  freshly  outraged  by  the  overthrow  of  the  bish- 
ops and  the  plunder  of  Wykeham.  They  forced  the  King 
to  cancel  the  sentence  of  banishment  from  the  precincts  of 
the  Court  which  had  been  directed  against  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester  by  refusing  any  grant  of  supply  in  Convoca- 
tion till  William  of  Wykeham  took  his  seat  in  it.  But 
in  the  prosecution  of  Wyclif  they  resolved  to  return  blow 
for  blow.  In  February,  1377,  he  was  summoned  before 
Bishop  Courtenay  of  London  to  answer  for  his  heretical 
propositions  concerning  the  wealth  of  the  Church. 

The  Duke  of  Lancaster  accepted  the  challenge  as  really 
given  to  himself,  and  stood  by  Wyclif 's  side  in  the  Con- 
sistory Court  at  St.  Paul's.  But  no  trial  took  place.  Fierce 
words  passed  between  the  nobles  and  the  prelate :  the  Duke 
himself  was  said  to  have  threatened  to  drag  Courtenay  out 
of  the  church  by  the  hair  of  his  head ;  at  last  the  London 
populace,  to  whom  John  of  Gaunt  was  hateful,  burst  in  to 
their  Bishop's  rescue,  and  Wyclif's  life  was  saved  with 
difficulty  by  the  aid  of  the  soldiery.  But  his  boldness  only 
grew  with  the  danger.  A  Papal  bull  which  was  procured 
by  the  bishops,  directing  the  University  to  condemn  and 
arrest  him,  extorted  from  him  a  bold  defiance.  In  a  de- 
fence circulated  widely  through  the  kingdom  and  laid  be- 
fore Parliament,  Wyclif  broadly  asserted  that  no  man 
could  be  excommunicated  by  the  Pope  "  unless  he  were  first 
excommunicated  by  himself."  He  denied  the  right  of  the 
Church  to  exact  or  defend  temporal  privileges  by  spiritual 
censures,  declared  that  a  Church  might  justly  be  deprived 
by  the  King  or  lay  lords  of  its  property  for  defect  of  duty, 
and  defended  the  subjection  of  ecclesiastics  to  civil  tribu- 
nals.    It  marks  the  temper  of  the  time  and  the  growing 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  473 

severance  between  the  Church  and  the  nation  that,  bold  as 
the  defiance  was,  it  won  the  support  of  the  people  as  of  the 
Crown.  When  Wyclif  appeared  at  the  close  of  the  year 
in  Lambeth  Chapel  to  answer  the  Archbishop's  summons 
a  message  from  the  Court  forbade  the  primate  to  proceed 
and  the  Londoners  broke  in  and  dissolved  the  session. 

Meanwhile  the  Duke's  unscrupulous  tampering  with 
elections  had  packed  the  Parliament  of  1377  with  his  adhe- 
rents. The  work  of  the  Good  Parliament  was  undone,  and 
the  Commons  petitioned  for  the  restoration  of  all  who  had 
been  impeached  by  their  predecessors.  The  needs  of  the 
treasury  were  met  by  a  novel  form  of  taxation.  To  the 
earlier  land-tax,  to  the  tax  on  personalty  which  dated  from 
the  Saladin  Tithe,  to  the  customs  duties  which  had  grown 
into  importance  in  the  last  two  reigns,  was  now  added  a 
tax  which  reached  every  person  in  the  realm,  a  poll-tax  of 
a  groat  a  head.  In  this  tax  were  sown  the  seeds  of  future 
trouble,  but  when  the  Parliament  broke  up  in  March  the 
Duke's  power  seemed  completely  secured.  Hardly  three 
months  later  it  was  wholly  undone.  In  June  Edward  the 
Third  died  in  a  dishonored  old  age,  robbed  on  his  death- 
bed even  of  his  rings  by  the  mistress  to  whom  he  clung, 
and  the  accession  of  his  grandson,  Richard  the  Second, 
changed  the  whole  face  of  affairs.  The  Duke  withdrew 
from  court,  and  sought  a  reconciliation  with  the  party  op- 
posed to  him.  The  men  of  the  Good  Parliament  surrounded 
the  new  King,  and  a  Parliament  which  assembled  in  Octo- 
ber took  vigorously  up  its  work.  Peter  de  la  Mare  was 
released  from  prison  and  replaced  in  the  chair  of  the  House 
of  Commons.  The  action  of  the  Lower  House  indeed  was 
as  trenchant  and  comprehensive  as  that  of  the  Good  Parlia- 
ment itself.  In  petition  after  petition  the  Commons  de- 
manded the  confirmation  of  older  rights  and  the  removal 
of  modern  abuses.  They  complained  of  administrative 
wrongs  such  as  the  practice  of  purveyance,  of  abuses  of 
justice,  of  the  oppressions  of  officers  of  the  exchequer  and 
of  the  forest,  of  the  ill  state  of  the  prisons,  of  the  custom 


474  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


of  "  maintenance"  by  which  lords  extended  their  livery  to 
shoals  of  disorderly  persons  and  overawed  the  courts  by 
means  of  them.  Amid  ecclesiastical  abuses  they  noted  the 
state  of  the  Church  courts,  and  the  neglect  of  the  laws  of 
Provisors.  They  demanded  that  the  annual  assembly  of 
Parliament,  which  had  now  become  customary,  should  be 
defined  by  law,  and  that  bills  once  sanctioned  by  the  Crown 
should  be  forthwith  turned  into  statutes  without  further 
amendment  or  change  on  the  part  of  the  royal  Council. 
With  even  greater  boldness  they  laid  hands  on  the  admin- 
istration itself.  They  not  only  demanded  that  the  evil 
counsellors  of  the  last  reign  should  be  removed,  and  that 
the  treasurer  of  the  subsidy  on  wool  should  account  for  its 
expenditure  to  the  lords,  but  that  the  royal  Council  should 
be  named  in  Parliament,  and  chosen  from  members  of 
either  estate  of  the  realm.  Though  a  similar  request  for 
the  nomination  of  the  officers  of  the  royal  household  was 
refused,  their  main  demand  was  granted.  It  was  agreed 
that  the  great  officers  of  state,  the  chancellor,  treasurer, 
and  barons  of  exchequer  should  be  named  by  the  lords  in 
Parliament,  and  removed  from  their  offices  during  the 
king's  "  tender  years"  only  on  the  advice  of  the  lords.  The 
pressure  of  the  war,  which  rendered  the  existing  taxes  in- 
sufficient, gave  the  House  a  fresh  hold  on  the  Crown. 
While  granting  a  new  subsidy  in  the  form  of  a  land  and 
property  tax,  the  Commons  restricted  its  proceeds  to  the 
war,  and  assigned  two  of  their  members,  William  Wal- 
worth and  John  Philpot,  as  a  standing  committee  to  regu- 
late its  expenditure.  The  successor  of  this  Parliament  in 
the  following  year  demanded  and  obtained  an  account  of 
the  way  in  which  the  subsidy  had  been  spent. 

The  minority  of  the  King,  who  was  but  eleven  years  old 
at  his  accession,  the  weakness  of  the  royal  council  amid 
the  strife  of  the  baronial  factions,  above  all  the  disasters  of 
the  war  without  and  the  growing  anarchy  within  the  realm 
itself,  alone  made  possible  this  startling  assumption  of  the 
executive  power  by  the   Houses.     The  shame  of  defeat 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  475 

abroad  was  being  added  to  the  misery  and  discomfort  at 
home.  The  French  war  ran  its  disastrous  course.  One 
English  fleot  was  beaten  by  the  Spaniards,  a  second  sunk 
by  a  storm;  and  a  campaign  in  the  heart  of  France  ended, 
like  its  predecessors,  in  disappointment  and  ruin.  Mean- 
while the  strife  between  employers  and  employed  was 
kindling  into  civil  war.  The  Parliament,  drawn  as  it  was 
wholly  from  the  proprietary  classes,  struggled  as  fiercely 
for  the  mastery  of  the  laborers  as  it  struggled  for  the  mas- 
tery of  the  Crown.  The  Good  Parliament  had  been  as 
strenuous  in  demanding  che  enforcement  of  the  Statute  of 
Laborers  as  any  of  its  predecessors.  In  spite  of  statutes, 
however,  the  market  remained  in  the  laborers'  hands.  The 
comfort  of  the  worker  rose  with  his  wages.  Men  who  had 
"no  land  to  live  on  but  their  hands  disdained  to  live  on 
penny  ale  or  bacon,  and  called  for  fresh  flesh  or  fish,  fried 
or  bake,  and  that  hot  and  hotter  for  chilling  of  their  maw." 
But  there  were  dark  shades  in  this  general  prosperity  of 
the  labor  class.  There  were  seasons  of  the  year  during 
which  employment  for  the  floating  mass  of  labor  was  hard 
to  find.  In  the  long  interval  between  harvest- tide  and  har- 
vest-tide work  and  food  were  alike  scarce  in  every  home- 
stead of  the  time.  Some  lines  of  William  Longland  give 
us  the  picture  of  a  farm  of  the  day.  "  I  have  no  penny 
pullets  for  to  buy,  nor  neither  geese  nor  pigs,  but  two  green 
cheeses,  a  few  curds  and  cream,  and  an  oaten  cake,  and 
two  loaves  of  beans  and  bran  baken  for  my  children.  I 
have  no  salt  bacon  nor  no  cooked  meat  collops  for  to  make, 
but  I  have  parsley  and  leeks  and  many  cabbage  plants, 
and  eke  a  cow  and  a  calf,  and  a  cart-mare  to  draw  a-fiold 
my  dung  while  the  drought  lasteth,  and  by  this  livelihood 
we  must  all  live  till  Lammas-tide  [August],  and  by  that 
I  hope  to  have  harvest  in  my  croft."  But  it  was  not  till 
Lammas-tide  that  high  wages  and  the  new  corn  bade 
"Hunger  go  to  sleep,"  and  during  the  long  spring  and 
summer  the  free  laborer  and  the  "  waster  that  will  not  work 
but  wander  about,  that  will  eat  no  bread  but  the  finest 


476  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE      [Rook  IV. 

wheat,  nor  drink  but  of  the  best  and  brownest  ale,"  was  a 
source  of  social  and  political  danger,  "  He  grieveth  him 
against  God  and  grudgeth  against  Reason,  and  then  curs- 
eth  he  the  King  and  all  his  council  after  such  law  to  allow 
laborers  to  grieve."  Such  a  smouldering  mass  of  discon- 
tent as  this  needed  but  a  spark  to  burst  into  flame ;  and 
the  spark  was  found  in  the  imposition  of  fresh  taxation. 

If  John  of  Gaunt  was  fallen  from  his  old  power  he  was 
still  the  leading  noble  in  the  realm,  and  it  is  possible  that 
dread  of  the  encroachments  of  the  last  Parliament  on  the 
executive  power  drew  after  a  time  even  the  new  advisers 
of  the  Crown  closer  to  him.  Whatever  was  the  cause,  he 
again  came  to  the  front.  But  the  supplies  voted  in  the 
past  year  were  wasted  in  his  hands.  A  fresh  expedition 
against  France  under  the  Duke  himself  ended  in  failure 
before  the  walls  of  St.  Malo,  while  at  home  his  brutal 
household  was  outraging  public  order  by  the  murder  of  a 
knight  who  had  incurred  John's  anger  in  the  precincts  of 
Westminster.  So  great  was  the  resentment  of  the  Lon- 
doners at  this  act  that  it  became  needful  to  summon  Par- 
liament elsewhere  than  to  the  capital;  and  in  1378  the 
Houses  met  at  Gloucester.  The  Duke  succeeded  in  bring- 
ing the  lords  to  refuse  those  conferences  with  the  Com- 
mons which  had  given  unity  to  the  action  of  the  late  Par- 
liament, but  he  was  foiled  in  an  attack  on  the  clerical 
privilege  of  sanctuary  and  in  the  threats  which  his  party 
still  directed  against  Church  propertj^,  while  the  Commons 
forced  the  royal  Council  to  lay  before  them  the  accounts  of 
the  last  subsidy  and  to  appoint  a  commission  to  examine 
into  the  revenue  of  the  Crown.  Unhappily  the  financial 
policy  of  the  preceding  year  was  persisted  in.  The  check 
before  St.  Malo  had  been  somewhat  redeemed  by  treaties 
with  Charles  of  Evreaux  and  the  Duke  of  Brittany  which 
secured  to  England  the  right  of  holding  Cherbourg  and 
Brest;  but  the  cost  of  these  treaties  only  swelled  the  ex- 
penses of  the  war.  The  fresh  supplies  voted  at  Gloucester 
proved  insufficient  for  their  purpose,  and  a  Parliament  in 


Chap.  8.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  477 

the  spring  of  1379  renewed  the  Poll-tax  in  a  graduated 
form.  But  the  proceeds  of  tha  tax  proved  miserably  in- 
adequate, and  when  fresh  debts  beset  the  Crown  in  1380  a 
return  was  again  made  to  the  old  system  of  subsidies. 
But  these  failed  in  their  turn ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  year 
the  Parliament  again  fell  back  on  a  severer  Poll-tax.  One 
of  the  attractions  of  the  new  mode  of  taxation  seems  to 
have  been  that  the  clergy,  who  adopted  it  for  themselves, 
paid  in  this  way  a  larger  share  of  the  burdens  of  the 
state ;  but  the  chief  ground  for  its  adoption  lay,  no  doubt, 
in  its  bringing  within  the  net  of  the  tax-gatherer  a  class 
which  had  hitherto  escaped  him,  men  such  as  the  free  la- 
borer, the  village  smith,  the  village  tiler.  But  few  courses 
could  have  been  more  dangerous.  The  poll-tax  not  only 
brought  the  pressure  of  the  war  home  to  every  household ; 
it  goaded  into  action  precisely  the  class  which  was  already 
seething  with  discontent.  The  strife  between  labor  and 
capital  was  going  on  as  fiercely  as  ever  in  country  and  in 
town.  The  landlords  were  claiming  new  services,  or  forc- 
ing men  who  looked  on  themselves  as  free  to  prove  they 
were  no  villeins  by  law.  The  free  laborer  was  struggling 
against  the  attempt  to  exact  work  from  him  at  low  wages. 
The  wandering  workman  was  being  seized  and  branded  as 
a  vagrant.  The  abbey  towns  were  struggling  for  free- 
dom against  the  abbeys.  The  craftsmen  within  boroughs 
were  carrying  on  the  same  strife  against  employer  and 
craft-guild.  And  all  this  mass  of  discontent  was  being 
heightened  and  organized  by  agencies  with  which  the  gov- 
eimment  could  not  cope.  The  poorer  villeins  and  the  free 
laborers  had  long  since  banded  together  in  secret  conspira- 
cies which  the  wealthier  villeins  supported  with  money. 
The  return  of  soldiers  from  the  war  threw  over  the  land  a 
host  of  broken  men,  skilled  in  arras,  and  ready  to  take 
part  in  any  rising.  The  begging  friars,  wandering  and 
gossiping  from  village  to  village  and  street  to  street,  shared 
the  passions  of  the  class  from  which  they  sprang.  Priests 
like  Ball  openly  preached  the  doctrines  of  communism 


478  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

And  to  these  had  been  recently  added  a  fresh  agency 
which  could  hardly  fail  to  stir  a  new  excitement.  With 
the  practical  ability  which  marked  his  character  Wyclif 
set  on  foot  about  this  time  a  body  of  poor  preachers  to  sup- 
ply, as  he  held,  the  place  of  those  wealthier  clergy  who 
had  lost  their  hold  on  the  land.  The  coarse  sermons,  bare 
feet,  and  russet  dress  of  these  "Simple  Priests"  moved  the 
laughter  of  rector  and  canon,  but  they  proved  a  rapid  and 
effective  means  of  diffusing  Wyclif 's  protests  against  the 
wealth  and  sluggishness  of  the  clergy,  and  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  in  the  general  turmoil  their  denunciation  of 
ecclesiastical  wealth  passed  often  into  more  general  de- 
nunciations of  the  proprietary  classes. 

As  the  spring  went  bj^  quaint  rhymes  passed  through  the 
country,  and  served  as  a  summons  to  revolt.  "  John  Ball, " 
ran  one,  "  greeteth  you  all,  and  doth  for  to  understand  ho 
hath  rung  j'our  bell.  ISTow  right  and  might,  will  and  skill, 
God  speed  every  dele."  "Help  truth,"  ran  another,  "and 
truth  shall  help  you!  Now  reigneth  pride  in  price,  and 
covetise  is  counted  wise,  and  lechery  withouten  shame, 
and  gluttony  withouten  blame.  Envy  reigneth  with  trea- 
son, and  sloth  is  take  in  great  season.  God  do  bote,  for 
now  is  tyme !"  We  recognize  Ball's  hand  in  the  yet  more 
stirring  missives  of  "  Jack  the  Miller"  and  "  Jack  the  Car- 
ter." "Jack  Miller  asketh  help  to  turn  his  mill  aright. 
He  hath  grounden  small,  small :  the  King's  Son  of  Heaven 
he  shall  pay  for  all.  Look  thy  mill  go  aright  with  the  four 
sailes,  and  the  post  stand  with  steadfastness.  With  right 
and  with  might,  with  skill  and  with  will;  let  might  help 
right,  and  skill  go  before  will,  and  right  before  might,  so 
goeth  our  mill  aright."  "Jack  Carter,"  ran  the  compan- 
ion missive,  "  prays  you  all  that  ye  make  a  good  end  of 
that  ye  have  begun,  and  do  well,  and  aye  better  and  bet- 
ter: for  at  the  even  men  heareth  the  day."  "Falseness 
and  guile,"  sang  Jack  Trewman,  "have  reigned  too  long, 
and  truth  hath  been  set  under  a  lock,  and  falseness  and 
guile  reigneth  in  every  stock.     No  man  may  come  truth 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  479 

to,  but  if  he  sing  'si  dedero.'  True  love  is  away  that  was 
so  good,  and  clerks  for  wealth  work  them  woe.  God  do 
bote,  for  now  is  time."  In  the  rude  jingle  of  these  lines 
began  for  England  the  literature  of  political  controversy : 
they  are  the  first  predecessors  of  the  pamphlets  of  Milton 
and  of  Burke.  Rough  as  they  are,  they  express  clearly 
enough  the  mingled  passions  which  met  in  the  revolt  of 
the  peasants :  their  longing  for  a  right  rule,  for  plain  and 
simple  justice;  their  scorn  of  the  immorality  of  the  nobles 
and  the  infamy  of  the  court;  their  resentment  at  the  per- 
version of  the  law  to  the  cause  of  oppression. 

From  the  eastern  and  midland  counties  the  restlessness 
spread  to  all  England  south  of  the  Thames.  But  the 
grounds  of  discontent  varied  with  every  district.  The 
actual  outbreak  began  on  the  5th  of  June  at  Dartford,  where 
a  tiler  killed  one  of  the  collectors  of  the  poll-tax  in  venge- 
ance for  a  brutal  outrage  on  his  daughter.  The  county 
at  once  rose  in  arms.  Canterbur}'^,  where  "  the  whole  town 
was  of  their  mind,"  threw  open  its  gates  to  the  insurgents 
who  plundered  the  Archbishop's  palace  and  dragged  John 
Ball  from  his  prison.  A  hundred  thousand  Kentishmen 
gathered  round  Walter  Tyler  of  Essex  and  John  Hales  of 
Mailing  to  march  upon  London.  Their  grievance  was 
mainly  a  political  one.  Villeinage  was  unknown  in  Kent. 
As  the  peasants  poured  toward  Blackheath  indeed  every 
lawyer  who  fell  into  their  hands  was  put  to  death ;  "  not 
till  all  these  were  killed  would  the  land  enjoy  its  old  free- 
dom again,"  the  Kentishmen  shouted  as  they  fired  the 
houses  of  the  stewards  and  flung  the  rolls  of  the  manor- 
courts  into  the  flames.  But  this  action  can  hardly  have 
been  due  to  anything  more  than  sympathy  with  the  rest 
of  the  realm,  the  sympathy  which  induced  the  same  men 
when  pilgrims  from  the  north  brought  news  that  John  of 
Gaunt  was  setting  free  his  bondmen  to  send  to  the  Duke 
an  offer  to  make  him  Lord  jind  King  of  England.  Nor 
was  their  grievance  a  religious  one.  Lollardry  can  have 
made  little  way  among  men.  whose  grudge  against  th*» 


480  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

Archbishop  of  Canterbury  sprang  from  his  discouragement 
of  pilgrimages.  Their  discontent  was  simply  political; 
they  demanded  the  svippression  of  the  poll-tax  and  better 
government ;  their  aim  was  to  slay  the  nobles  and  wealth- 
ier clergy,  to  take  the  King  into  their  own  hands,  and  pass 
laws  which  should  seem  good  to  the  Commons  of  the  realm. 
The  whole  population  joined  the  Kentishmen  as  they 
marched  along,  while  the  nobles  were  paralyzed  with  fear. 
The  young  King — he  was  but  a  boy  of  sixteen — addressed 
them  from  a  boat  on  the  river ;  but  the  refusal  of  his  Coun- 
cil under  the  guidance  of  Archbishop  Sudbury  to  allow 
him  to  land  kindled  the  peasants  to  fury,  and  with  cries 
of  "  Treason"  the  great  mass  rushed  on  London.  On  the 
loth  of  June  its  gates  were  flung  open  by  the. poorer  arti- 
sans within  the  city,  and  the  stately  palace  of  John  of 
Gaunt  at  the  Savoy,  the  new  inn  of  the  lawyers  at  the 
Temple,  the  houses  of  the  foreign  merchants,  were  soon  in 
a  blaze.  But  the  insurgents,  as  they  proudly  boasted, 
were  "seekers  of  truth  and  justice,  not  thieves  or  robbers," 
and  a  plunderer  found  carrying  off  a  silver  vessel  from  the 
sack  of  the  Savoy  was  flung  with  his  spoil  into  the  flames. 
Another  body  of  insurgents  encamped  at  the  same  time  to 
the  east  of  the  city.  In  Essex  and  the  eastern  counties 
the  popular  discontent  was  more  social  than  political. 
The  demands  of  the  peasants  were  that  bondage  should  be 
abolished,  that  tolls  and  imposts  on  trade  should  be  done 
away  with,  that  "  no  acre  of  land  which  is  held  in  bondage 
or  villeinage  be  held  at  higher  rate  than  fourpence  a  year," 
in  other  words  for  a  money  commutation  of  all  villein 
services.  Their  rising  had  been  even  earlier  than  that  of 
the  Kentishmen.  Before  Whitsuntide  an  attempt  to  levy 
the  poll-tax  gathered  crowds  of  peasants  together,  armed 
with  clubs,  rusty  swords,  and  bows.  The  royal  commis- 
sioners who  were  sent  to  repress  the  tumult  were  driven 
from  the  field,  and  the  Essex  men  marched  upon  London 
on  one  side  of  the  river  as  the  Kentishmen  marched  on  the 
other.     The  evening  of  the  thirteenth,  the  day  on  which 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  4U1 

Tyler  entered  the  city,  saw  them  encamped  without  its 
walls  at  Mile-end.  At  the  same  moment  Highbury  and 
the  northern  heights  were  occupied  by  the  men  of  Hert- 
fordshire and  the  villeins  of  St.  Albans,  where  a  strife  be 
tween  abbot  and  town  had  been  going  on  since  the  days  oi 
Edward  the  Second. 

The  royal  Council  with  the  young  King  had  taken  ref- 
uge in  the  Tower,  and  their  aim  seems  to  have  been  to  di- 
vide the  forces  of  the  insurgents.  On  the  morning  of  the 
fourteenth  therefore  Richard  rode  from  the  Tower  to  Mile- 
end  to  meet  the  Essex  men.  "  I  am  your  King  and  Lord, 
good  people,"  the  boy  began  with  a  fearlessness  which 
marked  his  bearing  throughout  the  crisis,  "  what  will  j'ou?" 
"  We  will  that  you  free  us  forever,"  shouted  the  peasants, 
"  us  and  our  lands ;  and  that  we  be  never  named  nor  held 
for  serfs !"  "  I  grant  it, "  replied  Richard ;  and  he  bade 
them  go  home,  pledging  himself  at  once  to  issue  charters 
of  freedom  and  amnesty.  A  shout  of  joy  welcomed  the 
promise.  Throughout  the  day  more  than  thirty  clerks 
were  busied  writing  letters  of  pardon  and  emancipation, 
and  with  these  the  mass  of  the  Essex  men  and  the  men  of 
Hertfordshire  withdrew  quietly  to  their  homes.  But  while 
the  King  was  successful  at  Mile-end  a  terrible  doom  had 
fallen  on  the  councillors  he  left  behind  him.  Richard  had 
hardl}^  quitted  the  Tower  when  the  Kentishmen  who  had 
spent  the  night  within  the  city  appeared  at  its  gates.  The 
general  terror  was  shown  ludicrously  enough  when  they 
burst  in  and  taking  the  panic-stricken  knights  of  the  royal 
household  in  rough  horse-play  by  the  beard  promised  to  be 
their  equals  and  good  comrades  in  the  days  to  come.  But 
the  horse-play  changed  into  dreadful  earnest  when  they 
found  that  Richard  had  escaped  their  grasp,  and  the  dis- 
covery of  Archbishop  Sudbury  and  other  ministers  in  the 
chapel  changed  their  fury  into  a  cry  for  blood.  The  Pri- 
mate was  dragged  from  his  sanctuary  and  beheaded.  The 
same  vengeance  was  wreaked  on  the  Treasurer  and  the 
Chief  Commissioner  for  the  levy  of  the  hated  poll-tax, 
Vol.  I.— 31 


482  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

the  merchant  Richard  Lyons  who  had  been  impeached  by 
the  Good  Parliament.  Richard  meanwhile  had  ridden 
round  the  northern  wall  of  the  city  to  the  Wardrobe  near 
Blackfriars,  and  from  this  new  refuge  he  opened  his  nego- 
tiations with  the  Kentish  insurgents.  Many  of  these  dis- 
persed at  the  news  of  the  King's  pledge  to  the  men  of 
Essex,  but  a  bod)'-  of  thirty  thousand  still  surrounded  Wat 
Tyler  when  Richard  on  the  morning  of  the  fifteenth  en- 
countered that  leader  by  a  mere  chance  at  Smithfield. 
Hot  words  passed  between  his  train  and  the  peasant  chief- 
tain who  advanced  to  confer  with  the  King,  and  a  threat 
from  Tyler  brought  on  a  brief  struggle  in  which  the  Mayor 
of  London,  William  Walworth,  struck  him  with  his  dag- 
ger to  the  ground.  "  Kill !  kill !"  shouted  the  crowd,  "  they 
have  slain  our  captain !"  But  Richard  faced  the  Kentish- 
men  with  the  same  cool  courage  with  which  he  faced  the 
men  of  Essex.  "  What  need  ye,  my  masters !"  cried  the 
boy-king  as  he  rode  boldly  up  to  the  front  of  the  bowmen, 
"lam  your  Captain  and  your  King!  Follow  me!"  The 
hopes  of  the  peasants  centred  in  the  young  sovereign ;  one 
aim  of  their  rising  had  been  to  free  him  from  the  evil 
counsellors  who,  as  they  believed,  abused  his  youth ;  and 
at  his  word  they  folloAved  him  with  a  touching  loyalty  and 
trust  till  he  entered  the  Tower.  His  mother  welcomed 
him  within  its  walls  with  tears  of  joy.  "Rejoice  and 
praise  God,"  Richard  answered,  "for  I  have  recovered  to- 
day my  heritage  which  was  lost  and  the  realm  of  Eng- 
land !"  But  he  was  compelled  to  give  the  same  pledge  of 
freedom  to  the  Kentishmen  as  at  Mile-end,  and  it  was  only 
after  receiving  his  letters  of  pardon  and  emancipation  that 
the  yeomen  dispersed  to  their  homes. 

The  revolt  indeed  was  far  from  being  at  an  end.  As  the 
news  of  the  rising  ran  through  the  country  the  discontent 
almost  everj'where  broke  into  tlame.  There  were  outbreaks 
in  every  shire  south  of  the  Thames  as  far  westward  as  Dev- 
onshire. In  the  north  tumults  broke  out  at  Beverley  and 
Scarborough,  and  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire  made  read/ 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  483 

to  rise.  The  eastern  counties  were  in  one  wild  turmoil  of 
revolt.  At  Cambridge  the  townsmen  burned  the  charters 
of  the  University  and  attacked  the  colleges.  A  body  of 
peasants  occupied  St.  Alban's.  In  Norfolk  a  Norwich 
artisan,  called  John  the  Litster  or  Dyer,  took  the  title  of 
King  of  the  Commons,  and  marching  through  the  country 
at  the  head  of  a  mass  of  peasants  compelled  the  nobles 
whom  he  captured  to  act  as  his  meat-tasters  and  to  serve 
him  on  their  knees  during  his  repast.  The  story  of  St. 
Edmundsbury  shows  us  what  was  going  on  in  Suffolk. 
Ever  since  the  accession  of  Edward  the  Third  the  towns- 
men and  the  villeins  of  their  lands  around  had  been  at  war 
with  the  abbot  and  his  monks.  The  old  and  more  oppres- 
sive servitude  had  long  passed  away,  but  the  later  abbots 
had  set  themselves  against  the  policy  of  concession  and 
conciliation  which  had  brought  about  this  advance  toward 
freedom.  The  gates  of  the  town  were  still  in  the  abbot's 
hands.  He  had  succeeded  in  enforcing  his  claim  to  the 
wardship  of  all  orphans  born  within  his  domain.  From 
claims  such  as  these  the  town  could  never  feel  itself  safe 
so  long  as  mysterious  charters  from  Pope  or  King,  inter- 
preted cunningly  by  the  wit  of  the  new  lawj-er  class,  lay 
stored  in  the  abbe}^  archives.  But  the  archives  contained 
other  and  hardl}^  less  formidable  documents  than  these. 
Untroubled  by  the  waste  of  war,  the  religious  houses 
profited  more  than  any  other  landowners  by  the  general 
growth  of  wealth.  They  had  become  great  proprietors, 
money-lenders  to  their  tenants,  extortionate  as  the  Jew 
whom  thev  had  banished  from  their  land.  There  were 
few  townsmen  of  St.  Edmund's  who  had  not  some  bonds 
laid  up  in  the  abbey  registry.  In  1 327  one  band  of  debtors 
had  a  covenant  lying  there  for  the  payment  of  five  hundred 
marks  and  fifty  casks  of  wine.  Another  company  of  the 
wealthier  burgesses  were  joint  debtors  on  a  bond  for  ten 
thousand  pounds.  The  new  spirit  of  commercial  activity 
joined  with  the  troubles  of  the  time  to  throw  the  whole 
community  into  the  abbot's  hands. 


484  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

We  can  hardly  wonder  that  riots,  lawsuits,  and  royal 
commissions  marked  the  relation  of  the  town  and  abbey 
under  the  first  two  Edwards.  Under  the  third  came  an 
open  conflict.  In  1337  the  townsmen  burst  into  the  great 
house,  drove  the  monks  into  the  choir,  and  dragged  them 
thence  to  the  town  prison.  The  abbey  itself  was  sacked ; 
chalices,  missals,  chasubles,  tunicles,  altar  frontals,  the 
books  of  the  library,  the  very  vats  and  dishes  of  the  kitchen, 
all  disappeared.  The  monks  estimated  their  losses  at  ten 
thousand  pounds.  But  the  townsmen  aimed  at  higher 
booty  than  this.  The  monks  were  brought  back  from 
prison  to  their  own  chapter-house,  and  the  spoil  of  their 
registry,  papal  bulls  and  royal  charters,  deeds  and  bonds 
and  mortgages,  were  laid  before  them.  Amidst  the  wild 
threats  of  the  mob  they  were  forced  to  execute  a  grant  of 
perfect  freedom  and  of  a  guild  to  the  town  as  well  as  of  free 
release  to  their  debtors.  Then  they  were  left  masters  of 
the  ruined  house.  But  all  control  over  town  or  land  was 
gone.  Through  spring  and  summer  no  rent  or  fine  was 
paid.  The  bailiffs  and  other  officers  of  the  abbey  did  not 
dare  to  show  their  faces  in  the  streets.  News  came  at 
last  that  the  abbot  was  in  London,  appealing  for  redress 
to  the  court,  and  the  whole  county  was  at  once  on  fire.  A 
crowd  of  rustics,  maddened  at  the  thought  of  revived  claims 
of  serfage,  of  interminable  suits  of  law,  poured  into  the 
streets  of  the  town.  From  thirty -two  of  the  neighboring 
villages  the  priests  marched  at  the  head  of  their  flocks  as 
on  a  new  crusade.  The  wild  mass  of  men,  women,  and 
children,  twenty  thousand  in  all,  as  men  guessed,  rushed 
again  on  the  abbey,  and  for  four  November  days  the  work 
of  destruction  went  on  unhindered.  When  gate,  stables, 
granaries,  kitchen,  infirmary,  hostelry  had  gone  up  in 
flames,  the  multitude  swept  away  to  the  granges  and  barns 
of  the  abbey  farms.  Their  plunder  shows  what  vast  agri- 
cultural proprietors  the  monks  had  become.  A  thousand 
horses,  a  hundred  and  twenty  plough-oxen,  two  hundred 
cows,  three  hundred  bullocks,   three  hundred  hogs,  ten 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  485 

thousand  sheep  were  driven  ojff,  and  granges  and  barns 
burned  to  the  ground.  It  was  judged  afterward  that  sixty 
thousand  pounds  would  hardly  cover  the  loss. 

Weak  as  was  the  government  of  Mortimer  and  Isabella, 
the  appeal  of  the  abbot  against  this  outrage  was  promptly 
heeded.  A  royal  force  quelled  the  riot,  thirty  carts  full  of 
prisoners  were  dispatched  to  Norwich;  twenty-four  of  the 
chief  townsmen  with  thirty-two  of  the  village  priests  were 
convicted  as  aiders  and  abettors  of  the  attack  on  the  abbey,' 
and  twenty  were  summarily  hanged.  Nearly  two  hun- 
dred persons  remained  under  sentence  of  outla^v^y,  and  for 
five  weary  years  their  case  dragged  on  in  the  King's  courts. 
At  last  matters  ended  in  a  ludicrous  outrage.  Irritated 
by  repeated  breaches  of  promise  on  the  abbot's  part,  the 
outlawed  burgesses  seized  him  as  he  lay  in  his  manor  of 
Chevington,  robbed  and  bound  him,  and  carried  him  off 
to  London.  There  he  was  hurried  from  street  to  street  lest 
his  hiding-place  should  be  detected  till  opportunity  offered 
for  shipping  him  off  to  Brabant.  The  Primate  and  the 
Pope  levelled  their  excommunications  against  the  abbot's 
captors  in  vain,  and  though  he  was  at  last  discovered  and 
brought  home  it  was  probably  with  some  pledge  of  the  ar- 
rangement which  followed  in  1332.  The  enormous  dam- 
ages assessed  by  the  royal  justices  were  remitted,  the  out- 
lawry of  the  townsmen  was  reversed,  the  prisoners  were 
released.  On  the  other  hand  the  deeds  which  had  been 
stolen  were  again  replaced  in  the  archives  of  the  abbey, 
and  the  charters  which  had  been  extorted  from  the  monks 
were  formally  cancelled. 

The  spirit  of  townsmen  and  villeins  remained  crushed 
by  their  failure,  and  throughout  the  reign  of  Edward  the 
Third  the  oppression  against  which  they  had  risen  went 
on  without  a  check.  It  was  no  longer  the  rough  blow  of 
sheer  force;  it  was  the  more  delicate  but  more  pitiless  tyr- 
anny of  the  law.  At  Richard's  accession  Prior  John  of 
Cambridge  in  the  vacancy  of  the  abbot  was  in  charge  of 
the  house.     The  prior  was  a  man  skilled  in  all  the  arts  of 


48G  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

his  day.  In  sweetness  of  voice,  in  knowledge  of  sacred 
song,  his  eulogists  pronounced  him  superior  to  Orpheus, 
to  Nero,  and  to  one  yet  more  illustrious  in  the  Bury  clois- 
ter tiiough  ohscure  to  us,  the  Breton  Belgabred.  John 
was  ''industrious  and  subtle,"  and  subtlety  and  industry 
found  their  scope  in  suit  after  suit  with  the  burgesses  and 
farmers  around  him.  "Faithfully  he  strove,"  says  the 
monastic  chronicler,  "  with  the  villeins  of  Bury  for  ths 
rights  of  his  house."  The  townsmen  he  owned  specially 
as  his  "adversaries,"  but  it  was  the  rustics  who  were  to 
show  what  a  hate  he  had  won.  On  the  fifteenth  of  June, 
the  day  of  Wat  Tyler's  fall,  the  howl  of  a  great  multitude 
round  his  manor  house  at  Mildenhall  broke  roughly  on  the 
chantings  of  Prior  John.  He  strove  to  fly,  but  he  was 
betrayed  by  his  own  servants,  judged  in  rude  mockery  of 
the  law  by  villein  and  bondsman,  condemned  and  killed. 
The  corpse  lay  naked  in  the  open  field  while  the  mob  poured 
unresisted  into  Bury.  Bearing  the  prior's  head  on  a  lance 
before  them  through  the  streets,  the  frenzied  throng  at  last 
reached  the  gallows  where  the  head  of  one  of  the  royal 
judges,  Sir  John  Cavendish,  was  alread}^  impaled;  and 
pressing  the  cold  lips  together  in  mockery  of  their  friend- 
ship set  them  side  by  side.  Another  head  soon  joined 
them.  The  abbey  gates  were  burst  open,  and  the  cloister 
filled  with  a  maddened  crowd,  howling  for  a  new  victim, 
John  Lackenheath,  the  warder  of  the  barony.  Few  knew 
him  as  he  stood  among  the  group  of  trembling  monks,  but 
he  courted  death  with  a  contemptuous  courage.  "  I  am 
the  man  you  seek,"  he  said,  stepping  forward;  and  in  a 
minute,  with  a  mighty  roar  of  "Devil's  son!  Monk! 
Traitor !"  he  was  swept  to  the  gallows,  and  his  head  hacked 
from  his  shoulders.  Then  the  crowd  rolled  back  again  to 
the  abbey  gate,  and  summoned  the  monks  before  them. 
They  told  them  that  now  for  a  long  time  they  had  op- 
pressed their  fellows,  the  burgesses  of  Bury;  wherefore 
they  willed  that  in  the  sight  of  the  Commons  they  should 
forthwith  surrender  their  bonds  and  charters.     The  monks 


Chap.  3.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  487 

brought  the  parchments  to  the  market-place ;  many  which 
were  demanded  they  swore  they  could  not  find.  A  com- 
promise was  at  last  patched  up ;  and  it  was  agreed  that 
the  charters  should  be  surrendered  till  tiie  future  abbot 
should  confirm  the  liberties  of  the  town.  Then,  unable  to 
do  more,  the  crowd  ebbed  away. 

A  scene  less  violent,  but  even  more  picturesque,  went  en 
the  same  day  at  St.  Alban's.  William  Grindecobbe,  the 
leader  of  its  townsmen,  returned  with  one  of  the  charters 
of  emancipation  which  Richard  had  granted  after  his  in- 
terview at  Mile-end  to  the  men  of  Essex  and  Hertfordshire, 
and  breaking  into  the  abbey  precincts  as  the  head  of  the 
burghers,  forced  the  abbot  to  deliver  up  the  charters  which 
bound  the  town  in  bondage  to  his  house.  But  a  more 
striking  proof  of  servitude  than  any  charters  could  give 
remained  in  the  mill-stones  which  after  a  long  suit  at  law- 
had  been  adjudged  to  the  abbey  and  placed  within  its  clois- 
ter as  a  triumphant  witness  that  no  townsman  might  grind 
corn  within  the  domain  of  the  abbey  save  at  the  abbot's 
mill.  Bursting  into  the  cloister,  the  burghers  now  tore 
the  mill-stones  from  the  floor,  and  broke  them  into  small 
pieces,  "like  blessed  bread  in  church,"  which  each  might 
carry  off  to  show  something  of  the  day  when  their  freedom 
was  won  again.  But  it  was  hardly  won  when  it  was  lost 
anew.  The  quiet  withdrawal  and  dispersion  of  the  peas- 
ant armies  with  their  charters  of  emancipation  gave  cour- 
age to  the  nobles.  Their  panic  passed  away.  The  war- 
like Bishop  of  Norwich  fell  lance  in  hand  on  Litster's 
camp,  and  scattered  the  peasants  of  Norfolk  at  the  first 
shock.  Richard  with  an  army  of  forty  thousand  men 
marched  in  triumph  through  Kent  and  Essex,  and  spread 
terror  by  the  ruthlessness  of  his  executions.  At  Waltham 
he  was  met  by  the  display  of  his  own  recent  charters  and 
a  protest  from  the  Essex  men  that  "they  were  so  far  as 
freedom  went  the  peers  of  their  lords."  But  they  were  to 
learn  the  worth  of  a  king's  word.  "Villeins  you  were," 
answered  Richard,  "  and  villeins  you  are.     In  bondage  you 


^88  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

shall  abide,  and  that  not  your  old  bondage,  but  a  worse  !** 
The  stubborn  resistance  which  he  met  showed  that  the 
temper  of  the  people  was  not  easily  broken.  The  villagers 
of  Billericay  threw  themselves  into  the  woods  and  fought 
two  hard  fights  before  they  were  reduced  to  submission. 
It  was  only  by  threats  of  death  that  verdicts  of  guilty  could 
be  wrung  from  Essex  jurors  when  the  leaders  of  the  revolt 
were  brought  before  them.  Grindecobbe  was  offered  his 
life  if  he  would  persuade  his  followers  at  St.  Alban's  to 
restore  the  charters  they  had  wrung  from  the  monks.  He 
turned  bravely  to  his  fellow-townsmen  and  bade  them  take 
no  thought  for  his  trouble.  "  If  I  die,"  he  said,  "  I  shall 
die  for  the  cause  of  the  freedom  we  have  won,  counting 
myself  happy  to  end  my  life  by  such  a  martyrdom.  Do 
then  to-day  as  you  would  have  done  had  I  been  killed  yes- 
terday." But  repression  went  pitilessly  on,  and  through 
the  summer  and  the  autumn  seven  thousand  men  are  said 
to  have  perished  on  the  gallows  or  the  field. 


CHAPTER  lY. 

RICHARD   THE   SECOND. 
1381—1400. 

Terrible  as  were  the  measures  of  repression  which  fo5- 
lowed  the  Peasant  Revolt,  and  violent  as  was  the  passion 
of  reaction  which  raged  among  the  proprietary  classes  at 
its  close,  the  end  of  the  rising  was  in  fact  secured.  The 
words  of  Grindecobbe  ere  his  death  were  a  prophecy  which 
time  fulfilled.  Cancel  charters  of  manumission  as  thg 
council  might,  serfage  was  henceforth  a  doomed  and  per- 
ishing thing.  The  dread  of  another  outbreak  hung  round 
the  employer.  The  attempt  to  bring  back  obsolete  ser- 
vices quietly  died  away.  The  old  process  of  enfranchise- 
ment went  quietly  on.  During  the  century  and  a  half  which 
followed  the  Peasant  Revolt  villeinage  died  out  so  rapidly 
that  it  became  a  rare  and  antiquated  thing.  The  class  of 
small  freeholders  sprang  fast  out  of  the  wreck  of  it  into  num- 
bers and  importance.  In  twenty  years  more  they  were  in 
fact  recognized  as  the  basis  of  our  electoral  system  in  every 
English  county.  The  Labor  Statutes  proved  as  ineffect- 
ive as  of  old  in  enchaining  labor  or  reducing  its  price.  A 
hundred  years  after  the  Black  Death  the  wages  of  an  Eng- 
lish laborer  was  sufficient  to  purchase  twice  the  amount  of 
the  necessaries  of  life  which  could  have  been  obtained  for 
the  wages  paid  under  Edward  the  Third.  The  incidental 
descriptions  of  the  life  of  the  working  classes  which  we 
find  in  Piers  Ploughman  show  that  this  increase  of  social 
comfort  had  been  going  on  even  during  the  troubled  period 
which  preceded  the  outbreak  of  the  peasants,  and  it  went 
on  faster  after  the  revolt  was  over.  But  inevitable  as  such 
a  progress  was,  every  step  of  it  was  taken  in  the  teeth  of 


490  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

the  wealthier  classes.  Their  temper  indeed  at  the  close  of 
the  rising  was  that  of  men  frenzied  by  panic  and  the  taste 
of  blood.  They  scouted  all  notion  of  concession.  The 
stubborn  will  of  the  conquered  was  met  by  as  stubborn  a 
will  in  their  conquerors.  The  royal  Council  showed  its 
sense  of  the  danger  of  a  mere  policy  of  resistance  by  sub- 
mitting the  question  of  enfranchisement  to  the  Parliament 
which  assembled  in  November,  1381 ,  with  words  which  sug- 
gested a  compromise.  "  If  you  desire  to  enfranchise  and 
set  at  liberty  the  said  serfs,"  ran  the  royal  message,  "by 
your  common  assent,  as  the  King  has  been  informed  that 
some  of  you  desire,  he  will  consent  to  your  prayer. "  But 
no  thoughts  of  compromise  influenced  the  landowners  in 
their  reply.  The  King's  grant  and  letters,  the  Parliament 
answered  with  perfe<"t  truth,  were  legally  null  and  void : 
their  serfs  were  their  goods,  and  the  King  could  not  take 
their  goods  from  them  but  by  their  own  consent.  "  And 
this  consent,"  they  ended,  "we  have  never  given  and  never 
will  give,  were  we  all  to  die  in  one  day."  Their  temper 
indeed  expressed  itself  in  legislation  which  was  a  fit  sequel 
to  the  Statutes  of  Laborers.  They  forbade  the  child  of  any 
tiller  of  the  soil  to  be  apprenticed  in  a  town.  They  prayed 
the  King  to  ordain  "  that  no  bondman  nor  bondwoman  shall 
place  their  children  at  school,  as  has  been  done,  so  as  to 
advance  their  children  in  the  world  by  their  going  into  the 
church."  The  new  colleges  which  were  being  founded  at 
the  Universities  at  this  moment  closed  their  gates  ujjon 
villeins. 

The  panic  which  produced  this  frenzied  reaction  against 
all  projects  of  social  reform  produced  inevitably  as  frenzied 
a  panic  of  reaction  against  all  plans  for  religious  reform. 
Wyclif  had  been  supported  by  the  Lancastrian  party  till 
the  very  eve  of  the  Peasant  Revolt.  But  with  the  rising 
his  whole  work  seemed  suddenly  undone.  The  quarrel  be- 
tween the  baronage  and  the  Church  on  which  his  political 
action  had  as  yet  been  grounded  was  hushed  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  common  danger.     His  "poor  preachers"  were 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461  491 

looked  upon  as  missionaries  of  socialism.  The  friars 
charged  Wyclif  with  being  a  "sower  of  strife  who  by  his 
serpentlike  instigation  had  set  the  serf  against  his  lord," 
and  though  he  tossed  back  the  charge  with  disdain  he  had 
to  bear  a  suspicion  which  was  justified  by  the  conduct  of 
seme  of  his  followers.  John  Ball,  who  had  figured  in  the 
front  rank  of  the  revolt,  was  falsely  named  as  one  of  his 
adherents,  and  was  alleged  to  have  denounced  in  his  last 
hour  the  conspiracy  of  the  "Wyclifites."  Wyclif 's  most 
prominent  scholar,  Nicholas  Herford,  was  said  to  have 
openly  approved  the  brutal  murder  of  Archbishop  Sud- 
bury. Whatever  belief  such  charges  might  gain,  it  is 
certain  that  from  this  moment  all  plans  for  the  reorgani- 
zation of  the  Church  were  confounded  in  the  general  odium 
which  attached  to  the  projects  of  the  peasant  leaders,  and 
that  any  hope  of  ecclesiastical  reform  at  the  hands  of  the 
baronage  and  the  Parliament  was  at  an  end.  But  even  it 
the  Peasant  Revolt  had  not  deprived  Wyclif  of  the  support 
of  the  aristocratic  party  with  whom  he  had  hitherto  co- 
operated, their  alliance  must  have  been  dissolved  by  the 
new  theological  position  which  he  had  already  taken  up. 
Some  months  before  the  outbreak  of  the  insurrection  he 
had  by  one  memorable  step  passed  from  the  position  of  a 
reformer  of  the  discipline  and  political  relations  of  the 
Church  to  that  of  a  protester  against  its  cardinal  beliefs. 
If  there  was  one  doctrine  upon  which  the  supremacy  of  the 
Mediaeval  Cliurch  rested,  it  was  the  doctrine  of  Transub- 
stantiation.  It  was  by  his  exclusive  right  to  the  perform- 
ance of  the  miracle  which  was  wrought  in  the  mass  that 
the  lowliest  priest  was  raised  high  above  princes.  With 
the  formal  denial  of  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation 
which  Wyclif  issued  in  the  spring  of  1381  began  that  great 
movement  of  religious  revolt  which  ended  more  than  a 
century  after  in  the  establishment  of  religious  freedom  by 
severing  the  mass  of  the  Teutonic  peoples  from  the  gen- 
eral body  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The  act  was  the  bolder 
that  he  stood  utterly  alone=     The  University  of  Oxford, 


492  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

in  which  his  influence  had  been  hitherto  all-powerful,  at 
once  condemned  him.  John  of  Gaunt  enjoined  him  to  be 
silent.  Wyclif  was  presiding  as  Doctor  of  Divinity  over 
some  disputations  in  the  schools  of  the  Augustinian  Canons 
when  his  academical  condemnation  was  publicly  read,  but 
though  startled  for  the  moment  he  at  once  challenged 
Chancellor  or  doctor  to  disprove  the  conclusions  at  which 
he  had  arrived.  The  prohibition  of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster 
he  met  by  an  open  avowal  of  his  teaching,  a  confession 
which  closes  proudly  with  the  quiet  words,  "  I  believe  that 
in  the  end  the  truth  will  conquer." 

For  the  moment  his  courage  dispelled  the  panic  around 
him.  The  University  responded  to  his  appeal,  and  by 
displacing  his  opponents  from  office  tacitly  adopted  his 
cause.  But  Wyclif  no  longer  looked  for  support  to  the 
learned  or  wealthier  classes  on  whom  he  had  hitherto  re- 
lied. He  appealed,  and  the  appeal  is  memorable  as  the 
first  of  such  a  kind  in  our  history,  to  England  at  large. 
With  an  amazing  industry  he  issued  tract  after  tract  in 
the  tongue  of  the  people  itself.  The  dry,  syllogistic  Latin, 
the  abstruse  and  involved  argument  which  the  great  doc- 
tor had  addressed  to  his  academic  hearers,  were  suddenly 
flung  aside,  and  by  a  transition  which  marks  the  wonder- 
ful genius  of  the  man  the  schoolman  was  transformed  into 
the  pamphleteer.  If  Chaucer  is  the  father  of  our  later 
English  poetry,  Wyclif  is  the  father  of  our  later  English 
prose.  The  rough,  clear,  homely  English  of  his  tracts,  the 
speech  of  the  ploughman  and  the  trader  of  the  day  though 
colored  with  the  picturesque  phraseology  of  the  Bible,  is 
in  its  literary  use  as  distinctly  a  creation  of  his  own  as  the 
style  in  which  he  embodied  it,  the  terse  vehement  sentences, 
the  stinging  sarcasms,  the  hard  antitheses  which  roused 
the  dullest  mind  like  a  whip.  Once  fairly  freed  from  the 
trammels  of  unquestioning  belief,  Wyclif's  mind  worked 
fast  in  its  career  of  scepticism.  Pardons,  indulgences, 
absolutions,  pilgrimages  to  the  shrines  of  the  saints,  wor- 
ship of  their  images,  worship  of  the  saints  themselves, 


Chap.  4 J  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  493 

were  successively  denied.  A  formal  appeal  to  the  Bible 
as  the  one  ground  of  faith,  coupled  with  an  assertion  of 
the  right  of  every  instructed  man  to  examine  the  Bible  for 
himself,  threatened  the  very  groundwork  of  the  older  dog- 
matism with  ruin.  Nor  were  these  daring  denials  con- 
fined to  the  small  circle  of  scholars  who  still  clung  to  him. 
The  "  Simple  Priests"  were  active  in  the  diffusion  of  their 
master's  doctrines,  and  how  rapid  their  progress  must 
have  been  we  may  see  from  the  panic-struck  exaggerations 
of  their  opponents.  A  few  years  later  they  complained 
that  the  followers  of  Wyclif  abounded  everywhere  and  in 
all  classes,  among  the  baronage,  in  the  cities,  among  the 
peasantry  of  the  countrj^-side,  even  in  the  monastic  cell 
Itself.     "'Every  second  man  one  meets  is  a  Lollard." 

"  Lollard,"  a  word  which  probably  means  "  idle  babbler," 
was  the  nickname  of  scorn  with  which  the  orthodox  Church 
men  chose  to  insult  their  assailants.  But  this  rapid  in- 
crease changed  their  scorn  into  vigorous  action.  In  1382 
Courtenay,  who  had  now  become  Archbishop,  summoned 
a  council  at  Blackfriars  and  formally  submitted  twenty- 
four  propositions  drawn  from  Wyclif 's  works.  An  earth- 
quake in  the  midst  of  the  proceedings  terrified  every  prel- 
ate but  the  resolute  Primate ;  the  expulsion  of  ill  humors 
from  the  earth,  he  said,  was  of  good  omen  for  the  expul- 
sion of  ill  humors  from  the  Church ;  and  the  condemnation 
was  pronounced.  Then  the  Archbishop  turned  fiercely 
upon  Oxford  as  the  fount  and  centre  of  the  new  heresies. 
In  an  English  sermon  at  St.  Frideswide's  Nicholas  Her- 
ford  had  asserted  the  truth  of  Wyclif's  doctrines,  and 
Courtenay  ordered  the  Chancellor  to  silence  him  and  his 
adherents  on  pain  of  being  himself  treated  as  a  heretic. 
The  Chancellor  fell  back  on  the  liberties  of  the  University, 
and  appointed  as  preacher  another  Wyclifite,  Rep3Tigdon, 
who  did  not  hesitate  to  style  the  Lollards  "holy  priests," 
and  to  affirm  that  they  were  protected  by  John  of  Gaunt. 
Party  spirit  meanwhile  ran  high  among  the  students. 
The  bulk  of  them  sided  with  the  Lollard  leaders,  and  a 


494  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


Carmelite,  Peter  Stokes,  who  had  procured  the  Archbishop's 
letters,  cowered  panic-stricken  in  his  chamber  while  the 
Chancellor,  protected  by  an  escort  of  a  hundred  townsmen, 
listened  approvingly  to  Repyngdon's  defiance.  "  I  dare 
go  no  further,"  wrote  the  poor  Friar  to  the  Archbishop, 
"  for  fear  of  death ;"  but  he  mustered  courage  at  last  to 
descend  into  the  schools  where  Repjmgdonwas  now  main- 
taining that  the  clerical  order  was  "  better  when  it  was  but 
nine  years  old  than  now  that  it  has  grown  to  a  thousand 
years  and  more."  The  appearance  however  of  scholars  in 
arms  again  drove  Stokes  to  fly  in  despair  to  Lambeth, 
while  a  new  heretic  in  open  Congregation  maintained 
Wyclif 's  denial  of  Transubstantiation.  "  There  is  no  idol- 
atry," cried  William  James,  "save  in  the  Sacrament  of 
the  Altar."  "You  speak  like  a  wise  man,"  replied  the 
Chancellor,  Robert  Rygge.  Courtenay  however  was  not 
the  man  to  bear  defiance  tamely,  and  his  summons  to  Lam- 
beth wrested  a  submission  from  Rygge  which  was  only 
accepted  on  his  pledge  to  suppress  the  Lollardism  of  the 
University.  "  I  dare  not  publish  them,  on  fear  of  death," 
exclaimed  the  Chancellor  when  Courtenay  handed  him  his 
letters  of  condemnation.  "Then  is  your  University  an 
open  fautor  of  heretics,"  retorted  the  Primate,  "  if  it  suffers 
not  the  Catholic  truth  to  be  proclaimed  within  its  bounds." 
The  royal  Council  supported  the  Archbishop's  injunction, 
but  the  publication  of  the  decrees  at  once  set  Oxford  on 
fire.  The  scholars  threatened  death  against  the  friars, 
"crying  that  they  wished  to  destroy  the  University." 
The  masters  suspended  Henry  Crump  from  teaching  as  a 
troubler  of  the  public  peace  for  calling  the  Lollards  "  here- 
tics." The  Crown,  however,  at  last  stepped  in  to  Courte- 
nay's  aid,  and  a  royal  writ  ordered  the  instant  banishment 
of  all  favorers  of  Wyclif  with  the  seizure  and  destruction 
of  all  Lollard  books  on  pain  of  forfeiture  of  the  Universi- 
ty's privileges.  The  threat  produced  its  effect.  Herford 
and  Repyngdon  appealed  in  vain  to  John  of  Caunt  for 
protection ;  the  Duke  himself  denounced  them  as  heretics 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  495 

against  the  Sacrament  of  the  Altar,  and  after  much  evasion 
they  were  forced  to  make  a  formal  submission.  Within 
Oxford  itself  the  suppression  of  Lollardism  was  complete, 
but  with  the  death  of  religious  freedom  all  trace  of  intel- 
lectual life  suddeuly  disappears.  The  century  which  fol- 
lowed the  triumph  of  Courtenay  is  the  most  barren  in  its 
annals,  nor  was  the  sleep  of  the  University  broken  till  the 
advent  of  the  New  Learning  restored  to  it  some  of  the  life 
and  liberty  which  the  Primate  had  so  roughly  trodden  out. 
Nothing  marks  more  strongly  the  grandeur  of  Wycllf 's 
position  as  the  last  of  the  great  schoolmen  than  the  reluc- 
tance of  so  bold  a  man  as  Courtenay  even  after  his  triumph 
over  Oxford  to  take  extreme  measures  against  the  head  of 
Lollardry.  Wyclif,  though  summoned,  had  made  no  ap- 
pearance before  the  "  Council  of  the  Earthquake."  "  Pon- 
tius Pilate  and  Herod  are  made  friends  to-day,"  was  his 
bitter  comment  on  the  new  union  which  proved  to  have 
sprung  up  between  the  prelates  and  the  monastic  orders 
who  had  so  long  been  at  variance  with  each  other ;  "  since 
they  have  made  a  heretic  of  Christ,  it  is  an  easy  inference 
for  them  to  count  simple  Christians  heretics."  He  seems 
indeed  to  have  been  sick  at  the  moment,  but  the  announce- 
ment of  the  final  sentence  roused  him  to  life  again.  He 
petitioned  the  King  and  Parliament  that  he  might  be  al- 
lowed freely  to  prove  the  doctrines  he  had  put  forth,  and 
turning  with  characteristic  energy  to  the  attack  of  his  as- 
sailants, he  asked  that  all  religious  vows  might  be  sup- 
pressed, that  tithes  might  be  diverted  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  poor  and  the  clergy  maintained  by  the  free  alms  of  their 
flocks,  that  the  Statutes  of  Provisors  and  Prjemunire  might 
be  enforced  against  the  Papacy,  that  Churchmen  might 
be  declared  incapable  of  secular  offices,  and  imprisonment 
for  excommunication  cease.  Finally  in  the  teeth  of  the 
council's  condemnation  he  demanded  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  Eucharist  which  he  advocated  might  bo  freely  taught. 
If  he  appeared  in  the  following  year  before  the  convoca- 
tion at  Oxford  it  was  to  perplex  his  opponents  by  a  display 


496  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

of  scholastic  logic  which  permitted  him  to  retire  without 
any  retractation  of  his  sacramental  heresy.  For  the  time 
his  opponents  seemed  satisfied  with  his  expulsion  from  the 
University,  but  in  his  retirement  at  Lutterworth  he  was 
forging  during  these  troubled  years  the  great  weapon 
which,  wielded  by  other  hands  than  his  own,  was  to  pro- 
duce so  terrible  an  effect  on  the  triumphant  hierarchy. 
An  earlier  translation  of  the  Scriptures,  in  part  of  which 
he  was  aided  by  his  scholar  Herford,  was  being  revised 
and  brought  to  the  second  form  which  is  better  known  as 
''  Wyclif 's  Bible"  when  death  drew  near.  The  appeal  of 
the  prelates  to  Rome  was  answered  at  last  by  a  Brief  or- 
dering him  to  appear  at  the  Papal  Court.  His  failing 
strength  exhausted  itself  in  a  sarcastic  reply  which  ex- 
plained that  his  refusal  to  comply  with  the  summons  sim- 
ply sprang  from  broken  health.  "  I  am  always  glad,"  ran 
the  ironical  answer,  "  to  explain  my  faith  to  any  one,  and 
above  all  to  the  Bishop  of  Rome ;  for  I  take  it  for  granted 
that  if  it  be  orthodox  he  will  confirm  it,  if  it  be  erroneous 
he  will  correct  it.  I  assume  too  that  as  chief  Vicar  of 
Christ  upon  earth  the  Bishop  of  Rome  is  of  all  mortal  men 
most  bound  to  the  law  of  Christ's  Gospel,  for  among  the 
disciples  of  Christ  a  majority  is  not  reckoned  by  simply 
counting  heads  in  the  fashion  of  this  world,  but  according 
to  the  imitation  of  Christ  on  either  side.  Now  Christ  dur- 
ing His  life  upon  earth  was  of  all  men  the  poorest,  casting 
from  Him  all  worldly  authority.  I  deduce  from  these 
premises  as  a  simple  counsel  of  my  own  that  the  Pope 
should  surrender  all  temporal  authority  to  the  civil  power 
and  advise  his  clergy  to  do  the  same. "  The  boldness  of 
his  words  sprang  perhaps  from  a  knowledge  that  his  end 
was  near.  The  terrible  strain  on  energies  enfeebled  by 
age  and  study  had  at  last  brought  its  inevitable  result,  and 
a  stroke  of  paralysis  while  Wyclif  was  hearing  mass  in 
his  parish  church  of  Lutterworth  was  followed  on  the  next 
day  by  his  death. 

The  persecution  of  Courtenay  deprived  the  religious  re- 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  497 

form  ol  its  more  learned  adherents  and  of  the  support  of 
the  Universities.  Wyclif 's  death  robbed  it  of  its  head  at 
a  moment  when  little  had  been  done  save  a  work  of  de- 
struction. From  that  moment  Lollardism  ceased  to  be  in 
any  sense  an  organized  movement  and  crumbled  into  a 
general  spirit  of  revolt.  All  the  religious  and  social  dis- 
content of  the  times  floated  instinctively  to  this  new  cen- 
tre. The  socialist  dreams  of  the  peasantry,  the  new  and 
keener  spirit  of  personal  morality,  the  hatred  of  the  friars, 
the  jealousy  of  the  great  lords  toward  the  prelacy,  the 
fanaticism  of  the  reforming  zealot  were  blended  together 
in  a  common  hostility  to  the  Church  and  a  common  resolve 
to  substitute  personal  religion  for  its  dogmatic  and  ecclesi- 
astical system.  But  it  was  this  want  of  organization,  this 
looseness  and  fluidity  of  the  new  movement,  that  made  it 
penetrate  through  every  class  of  society.  Women  as  well 
as  men  became  the  preachers  of  the  new  sect.  Lollardry 
had  its  own  schools,  its  own  books;  its  pamphlets  were 
passed  everywhere  from  hand  to  hand ;  scurrilous  ballads 
which  revived  the  old  attacks  of  "  Golias"  in  the  Angevin 
times  upon  the  wealth  and  luxury  of  the  clergy  were  sung 
at  every  corner.  Nobles  like  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  and  at 
a  later  time  Sir  John  Oldcastle  placed  themselves  openly 
at  the  head  of  the  cause  and  threw  open  their  gates  as  a 
refuge  for  its  missionaries.  London  in  its  hatred  of  the 
clergy  became  fiercely  Lollard,  and  defended  a  Lollard 
preacher  who  ventured  to  advocate  the  new  doctrines  from 
the  pulpit  of  St.  Paul's.  One  of  its  mayors,  John  of  North- 
ampton, showed  the  influence  of  the  new  morality  by  the 
Puritan  spirit  in  which  he  dealt  with  the  morals  of  the 
city.  Compelled  to  act,  as  he  said,  by  the  remissness  of 
the  clergy  who  connived  for  money  at  every  kind  of  de- 
bauchery, he  arrested  the  loose  women,  cut  off  their  hair, 
and  carted  them  through  the  streets  as  objects  of  public 
scorn.  But  the  moral  spirit  of  the  new  movement,  though 
infinitely  its  grander  side,  was  less  dangerous  to  the  Church 
than  its  open  repudiation  of  the  older  doctrines  and  systems 
Vol.  I.— 32 


408  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  I"^. 


of  Christendom.  Out  of  the  floating  mass  of  opinion 
which  bore  the  name  of  Lollardry  one  faith  gradually 
evolved  itself,  a  faith  in  the  sole  authority  of  the  Bible  as 
a  source  of  religious  truth.  The  translation  of  Wyclif  did 
its  work.  Scripture,  complains  a  canon  of  Leicester,  "  be- 
came a  vulgar  thing,  and  more  open  to  lay  folk  and  women 
that  knew  bow  to  read  than  it  is  wont  to  be  to  clerks  them- 
selves." Consequences  which  Wyclif  had  perhaps  shrunk 
from  drawing  were  boldly  drawn  by  his  disciples.  The 
Church  was  declared  to  have  become  apostate,  its  priest- 
hood was  denounced  as  no  priesthood,  its  sacraments  as 
idolatry. 

It  was  in  vain  that  the  clergy  attempted  to  stifle  the 
new  movement  by  their  old  weapon  of  persecution.  The 
jealousy  entertained  by  the  baronage  and  gentry  of  every 
pretension  of  the  Church  to  secular  power  foiled  its  efforts 
to  make  persecution  effective.  At  the  moment  of  the 
Peasant  Revolt  Courtenay  procured  the  enactment  of  a 
statute  which  commissioned  the  sheriffs  to  seize  all  persons 
convicted  before  the  bishops  of  preaching  heresy.  But  the 
statute  was  repealed  in  the  next  session,  and  the  Commons 
added  to  the  bitterness  of  the  blow  by  their  protest  that 
they  considered  it  "  in  nowise  their  interest  to  be  more  un- 
der the  jurisdiction  of  the  prelates  or  more  bound  by  them 
than  their  ancestors  had  been  in  times  past."  Heresy  in- 
deed was  still  a  felony  by  the  common  law,  and  if  as  yet 
we  meet  with  no  instances  of  the  punishment  of  heretics 
by  the  fire  it  was  because  the  threat  of  such  a  death  was  com- 
monly followed  by  the  recantation  of  the  Lollard.  But  the 
restriction  of  each  bishop's  jurisdiction  within  the  limits 
of  his  own  diocese  made  it  impossible  to  arrest  the  wan- 
dering preachers  of  the  new  doctrine,  and  the  civil  punish- 
ment— even  if  it  had  been  sanctioned  by  public  opinion- 
seems  to  have  long  fallen  into  desuetude.  Experience 
proved  to  the  prelates  that  few  sheriffs  would  arrest  on  the 
mere  warrant  of  an  ecclesiastical  officer,  and  that  no  royal 
court  would  issue  the  writ  "  for  the  burning  of  a  heretic'* 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  499 


on  a  bishop's  requisition.  But  powerless  as  the  efforts  of 
the  Church  were  for  purposes  of  repression,  they  were 
effective  in  rousing  the  temper  of  the  Lollards  into  a  bitter 
fanaticism.  The  heretics  delighted  in  outraging  the  relig- 
ious sense  of  their  day.  One  Lollard  gentleman  took 
home  the  sacramental  wafer  and  lunched  on  it  with  wine 
and  oysters.  Another  flung  some  images  of  the  saints 
into  his  cellar.  The  Lollard  preachers  stirred  up  riots  by 
the  virulence  of  their  preaching  against  the  friars.  But 
they  directed  even  fiercer  invectives  against  the  wealth  and 
secularit}^  of  the  great  Churchmen.  In  a  formal  petition 
which  was  laid  before  Parliament  in  1395  they  mingled 
denunciations  of  the  riches  of  the  clergy  with  an  open  pro- 
fession of  disbelief  in  transubstantiation,  priesthood,  pil- 
grimages, and  image  worship,  and  a  demand,  which  illus- 
trates the  strange  medley  of  opinions  which  jostled  together 
in  the  new  movement,  that  war  might  be  declared  unchris- 
tian and  that  trades  such  as  those  of  the  goldsmith  or  the 
armorer,  which  were  contrary  to  apostolical  poverty, 
might  be  banished  from  the  realm.  They  contended  (and 
it  is  remarkable  that  a  Parliament  of  the  next  reign  adopted 
the  statement)  that  from  the  superfluous  revenues  of  the 
Church,  if  once  they  were  applied  to  purposes  of  general 
utility,  the  King  might  maintain  fifteen  earls,  fifteen  hun- 
dred knights,  and  six  thousand  squires,  besides  endowing 
a  hundred  hospitals  for  the  relief  of  the  poor. 

The  distress  of  the  landowners,  the  general  disorganiza- 
tion of  the  countr}^,  in  every  part  of  which  bands  of  marau- 
ders were  openly  defying  the  law,  the  panic  of  the  Church 
and  of  society  at  large  as  the  projects  of  the  Lollards  shaped 
themselves  into  more  daring  and  revolutionary  forms, 
added  a  fresh  keenness  to  the  national  discontent  at  the 
languid  and  inefficient  prosecution  of  the  war.  The  junc- 
tion <)f  the  French  and  Spanish  fleets  had  made  them  mas- 
ters of  the  seas,  and  what  fragments  were  left  of  Guienne 
lay  at  their  mercy.  The  royal  Covmcil  strove  to  detach 
the   House  of  Luxemburg  from  the  French  alliance  by 


500  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


winning  for  Richard  the  hand  of  Anne,  a  daughter  of  the 
late  Emperor  Charles  the  Fourth  who  had  lied  at  Cregy, 
and  sister  of  King  Wenzel  of  Bohemia  who  was  now  King 
of  the  Romans.  But  the  marriage  remained  without  polit- 
ical result,  save  that  the  Lollard  books  which  were  sent 
into  their  native  country  by  the  Bohemian  servants  of  the 
new  queen  stirred  the  preaching  of  John  Huss  and  the 
Hussite  wars.  Nor  was  English  policy  more  successful  in 
Flanders.  Under  Philip  van  Arteveldt,  the  son  of  the 
leader  of  1345,  the  Flemish  towns  again  sought  the  friend- 
ship of  England  against  France,  but  at  the  close  of  1382  the 
towns  were  defeated  and  their  leader  slain  in  the  great 
French  victorj^  of  Rosbecque.  An  expedition  to  Flanders 
in  the  following  year  under  the  warlike  Bishop  of  Norwich 
turned  out  a  mere  plunder-raid  and  ended  in  utter  failure. 
A  short  truce  only  gave  France  the  leisure  to  prepare  a 
counter-blow  by  the  despatch  of  a  small  but  well-equipped 
force  under  John  de  Vienne  to  Scotland  in  1385.  Thirty 
thousand  Scots  joined  in  the  advance  of  this  force  over  the 
border ;  and  though  northern  England  rose  with  a  desper- 
ate effort  and  an  English  army  penetrated  as  far  as  Edin- 
burgh in  the  hope  of  bringing  the  foe  to  battle  it  was  forced 
to  fall  back  without  an  encounter.  Meanwhile  France 
dealt  a  more  terrible  blow  in  the  reduction  of  Ghent.  The 
one  remaining  market  for  English  commerce  was  thus 
closed  up,  while  the  forces  which  should  have  been  em- 
ployed in  saving  Ghent  and  in  the  protection  of  the  Eng- 
lish shores  against  the  threat  of  invasion  were  squandered 
by  John  of  Gaunt  in  a  war  which  he  was  carrying  on  along 
the  Spanish  frontier  in  pursuit  of  the  visionary  crown 
which  he  claimed  in  his  wife's  right.  The  enterprise 
showed  that  the  Duke  had  now  abandoned  the  hope  of  di- 
recting affairs  at  home  and  was  seeking  a  new  sphere  of 
activity  abroad.  To  drive  him  from  the  realm  had  been 
from  the  close  of  the  Peasant  Revolt  the  steady  purpose  of 
the  councillors  who  now  surrounded  the  young  King,  of 
his  favorite  Robert  de  Vere  and  his  Chancellor  Michael 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  501 

de  la  Pole,  who  was  raised  in  1385  to  the  Earldom  of  Suf- 
folk. The  Duke's  friends  were  expelled  from  office ;  John 
of  Northampton,  the  head  of  his  adherents  among  the 
Commons,  was  thrown  into  prison ;  the  Duke  himself  was 
charged  with  treason  and  threatened  with  arrest.  In  1386 
John  of  Gaunt  abandoned  the  struggle  and  sailed  for  Spain. 
Richard  himself  took  part  in  these  measures  against  the 
Duke.  He  was  now  twent}',  handsome  and  golden-haired, 
with  a  temper  capable  of  great  actions  and  sudden  bursts 
of  energy  but  indolent  and  unequal.  The  conception  of 
kingship  in  which  he  had  been  reared  made  him  regard 
the  constitutional  advance  which  had  gone  on  during  the 
war  as  an  invasion  of  the  rights  of  his  Crown.  He  looked 
on  the  nomination  of  the  royal  Council  and  the  great  offi- 
cers of  state  by  the  two  Houses  or  the  supervision  of  the 
royal  expenditure  by  the  Commons  as  infringements  on 
the  prerogative  which  only  the  pressure  of  the  war  and 
the  weakness  of  a  minority  had  forced  the  Crown  to  bow 
to.  The  judgment  of  his  councillors  was  one  with  that  of 
the  King.  Vere  was  no  mere  royal  favorite;  he  was  a 
great  noble  and  of  ancient  lineage.  Michael  de  la  Pole 
was  a  man  of  large  fortune  and  an  old  servant  of  the  Crown ; 
he  had  taken  part  in  the  war  for  thirty  years,  and  had 
been  admiral  and  captain  of  Calais.  But  neither  were 
men  to  counsel  the  young  King  wisely  in  his  effort  to  ob- 
tain independence  at  once  of  Parliament  and  of  the  great 
nobles.  His  first  aim  had  been  to  break  the  pressure  of 
the  royal  house  itself,  and  in  his  encounter  with  John  of 
Gaunt  he  had  proved  successful.  But  the  departure  of  the 
Duke  of  Lancaster  only  called  to  the  front  his  brother  and 
his  son.  Thomas  of  Woodstock,  the  Duke  of  Gloucester, 
had  inherited  much  of  the  lands  and  the  influence  of  the 
old  house  of  Bohun.  Round  Henry,  Earl  of  Derby,  the 
son  of  John  of  Gaunt  by  Blanche  of  Lancaster,  the  old 
Lancastrian  party  of  constitutional  opposition  was  once 
more  forming  itself.  The  favor  shown  to  the  followers  of 
Wyclif  at  the  Court  threw  on  the  side  of  this  new  oppo- 


602  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [BOOK  IV. 


sition  the  bulk  of  the  bishops  and  Churchmen.  Richard 
himself  showed  no  sj'-mpathy  with  the  Lollards,  but  the 
action  of  her  Bohemian  servants  shows  the  tendencies  of 
his  Queen.  Three  members  of  the  royal  Council  were  pa- 
trons of  the  Lollards,  and  the  Earl  of  Salisbury,  a  favorite 
with  the  King,  was  their  avowed  head.  The  Commons 
displayed  no  hostility  to  the  Lollards  nor  any  zeal  for  the 
Church;  but  the  lukewarm  prosecution  of  the  war,  the 
profuse  expenditure  of  the  Court,  and  above  all  the  mani- 
fest will  of  the  King  to  free  himself  from  Parliamentary 
control,  estranged  the  Lower  House.  Richard's  haughty 
words  told  their  own  tale.  When  the  Parliament  of  1385 
called  for  an  inquiry  every  year  into  the  royal  household, 
the  King  replied  he  would  inquire  when  he  pleased.  When 
it  prayed  to  know  the  names  of  the  officers  of  state,  he 
answered  that  he  would  change  them  at  his  will. 

The  burden  of  such  answers  and  of  the  policy  they  re- 
vealed fell  on  the  royal  councillors,  and  the  departure  of 
John  of  Gaunt  forced  the  new  opposition  into  vigorous 
action.  The  Parliament  of  1386  called  for  the  removal  of 
Suffolk.  Richard  replied  that  he  would  not  for  such  a 
prayer  dismiss  a  turnspit  of  his  kitchen.  The  Duke  of 
Gloucester  and  Bishop  Arundel  of  Ely  were  sent  by  the 
Houses  as  their  envoys,  and  warned  the  King  that  should 
a  ruler  refuse  to  govern  with  the  advice  of  his  lords  and  by 
mad  counsels  work  out  his  private  purposes  it  was  lawful 
to  depose  him.  The  threat  secured  Suffolk's  removal;  he 
was  impeached  for  corruption  and  maladministration,  and 
condemned  to  forfeiture  and  imprisonment.  It  was  only 
by  submitting  to  the  nomination  of  a  Continual  Council, 
with  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  at  its  head,  that  Richard 
could  obtain  a  grant  of  subsidies.  But  the  Houses  were 
no  sooner  broken  up  than  Suffolk  was  released,  and  in 
1387  the  young  King  rode  through  the  country  calling  on 
the  sheriffs  to  raise  men  against  the  barons,  and  bidding 
them  suffer  no  knight  of  the  shire  to  be  returned  for  the 
next  Parliament  "  save  one  whom  the  King  and  his  Coun 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  503 

cil  chose."  The  general  ill-will  foiled  both  his  efforts: 
and  he  was  forced  to  take  refuge  in  an  opinion  of  five  of 
the  judges  that  the  Continual  Council  w^as  unlawful,  the 
sentence  on  Suffolk  erroneous,  and  that  the  Lords  and 
Commons  had  no  power  to  remove  a  King's  servant. 
Gloucestet  answered  the  challenge  by  taking  up  arms,  and 
a  general  refusal  to  fight  for  the  King  forced  Richard  once 
more  to  yield.  A  terrible  vengeance  was  taken  on  his 
supporters  in  the  recent  schemes.  In  the  Parliament  of 
1388  Gloucester,  with  the  four  Earls  of  Derby,  Arundel, 
Warwick,  and  Nottingham,  appealed  on  a  charge  of  high 
treason  Suffolk  and  De  Vere,  the  Archbishop  of  York,  the 
Chief  Justice  Tresilian,  and  Sir  Nicholas  Bramber.  The 
first  two  fled,  Suffolk  to  France,  de  Vere  after  a  skirmish 
at  Radcot  Bridge  to  Ireland ;  but  the  Archbishop  was  de- 
prived of  his  see,  Bramber  beheaded,  and  Tresilian  hanged. 
The  five  judges  were  banished,  and  Sir  Simon  Burley  with 
three  other  members  of  the  royal  household  sent  to  the 
block. 

At  the  prayer  of  the  "  Wonderful  Parliament,"  as  some 
called  this  assembly,  or  as  others  with  more  justice  "  The 
Merciless  Parliament,"  it  was  provided  that  all  officers  of 
state  should  henceforth  be  named  in  Parliament  or  by  the 
Continual  Council.  Gloucester  remained  at  the  head  of 
the  latter  body,  but  his  power  lasted  hardly  a  year.  In 
May,  1389,  Richard  found  himself  strong  enough  to  break 
down  the  government  by  a  word.  Entering  the  Council 
he  suddenly  asked  his  uncle  how  old  he  was.  "Your 
highness,"  answered  Gloucester,  "  is  in  your  twenty-second 
year !"  "  Then  I  am  old  enough  to  manage  my  own  af- 
fairs," said  Richard  coolly;  "I  have  been  longer  under 
guardianship  than  any  ward  in  my  realm.  I  thank  you 
for  your  past  services,  my  lords,  but  I  need  them  no  more." 
The  resolution  was  welcomed  by  the  whole  country ;  and 
Richard  justified  the  country's  hopes  by  wielding  his  new 
power  with  singular  wisdom  and  success.  He  refused  to 
recall  de  Vere  or  the  five  judges.     The  intercession  of  John 


501  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


of  Gaunt  on  his  return  from  Spain  brought  about  a  full 
reconciliation  with  the  Lords  Appellant.  A  truce  was 
concluded  with  France,  and  its  renewal  year  after  year 
enabled  the  King  to  lighten  the  burden  of  taxation. 
Richard  announced  his  purpose  to  govern  by  advice  of 
Parliament;  he  soon  restored  the  Lords  Appellant  to  his 
Council,  and  committed  the  chief  offices  of  state  to  great 
Churchmen  like  Wykeham  and  Arundel.  A  series  of  stat- 
utes showed  the  activity  of  the  Houses.  A  Statute  of 
Provisors  which  re-enacted  those  of  Edward  the  Third 
was  passed  in  1390;  the  Statute  of  Preemunire,  which 
punished  the  obtaining  of  bulls  or  other  instruments  from 
Rome  with  forfeiture,  in  1393.  The  lords- were  bridled 
anew  by  a  Statute  of  Maintenance,  which  forbade  their 
violently  supporting  other  men's  causes  in  courts  of  justice 
or  giving  "livery"  to  a  host  of  retainers.  The  Statute  of 
Uses  in  1391,  which  rendered  illegal  the  devices  which 
had  been  invented  to  frustrate  that  of  Mortmain,  showed 
the  same  resolve  to  deal  firmly  with  the  Church.  A  re- 
form of  the  staple  and  other  mercantile  enactments  proved 
the  King's  care  for  trade.  Throughout  the  legislation  of 
these  eight  years  we  see  the  same  tone  of  coolness  and 
moderation.  Eager  as  he  was  to  win  the  good-will  of  the 
Parliament  and  the  Church,  Richard  refused  to  bow  to  the 
panic  of  the  landowners  or  to  second  the  persecution  of 
the  priesthood.  The  demands  of  the  Parliament  that  edu- 
cation should  be  denied  to  the  sons  of  villeins  was  refused. 
LoUardry  as  a  social  danger  was  held  firmly  at  bay,  and 
in  1 387  the  King  ordered  Lollard  books  to  be  seized  and 
brought  before  the  Council.  But  the  royal  officers  showed 
little  zeal  in  aiding  the  bishops  to  seize  or  punish  the 
heretical  teachers. 

It  was  in  the  period  of  peace  which  was  won  for  the 
country  by  the  wisdom  and  decision  of  its  young  King 
that  England  listened  to  the  voice  of  her  first  great  singer. 
The  work  of  Chaucer  marks  the  final  settlement  of  the 
Bkiglish  tongue.      The   close    of     the    great    movement 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  505 

toward  national  unity  which  had  been  going  on  ever  since 
the  Conquest  was  shown  in  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth 
century  by  the  disuse,  even  among  the  nobler  classes,  of 
the  French  tongue.  In  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  grammar 
schools  and  of  the  strength  of  fashion  English  won  its 
way  throughout  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  to  its  final 
triumph  in  that  of  his  grandson.  It  was  ordered  to  be 
used  in  courts  of  law  in  1362  "  because  the  French  tongue 
is  much  unknown,"  and  in  the  following  year  it  was  em- 
ployed by  the  Chancellor  in  opening  Parliament.  Bishops 
began  to  preach  in  English,  and  the  English  tracts  of 
Wyclif  made  it  once  more  a  literary  tongue.  We  see  the 
general  advance  in  two  passages  from  writers  of  Edward's 
and  Richard's  reigus.  "  Children  in  school,"  says  Higden, 
a  writer  of  the  first  period,  "  against  the  usage  and  man- 
ner of  all  other  nations  be  compelled  for  to  leave  their  own 
language  and  for  to  construe  their  lessons  and  their  things 
in  French,  and  so  they  have  since  the  Normans  first  came 
into  England.  Also  gentlemen  children  be  taught  for  to 
speak  French  from  the  time  that  they  be  rocked  in  their 
cradle,  and  know  how  to  speak  and  play  with  a  child's 
toy ;  and  uplandish  (or  country)  men  will  liken  themselves 
to  gentlemen,  and  thrive  with  great  busyness  to  speak 
French  for  to  be  more  told  of."  "This  manner,"  adds 
John  of  Trevisa,  Higden 's  translator  in  Richard's  time, 
"  was  much  used  before  the  first  murrain  (the  Black  Death 
of  1349),  and  is  since  somewhat  changed.  For  John  Corn- 
wal,  a  master  of  grammar,  changed  the  lore  in  grammar 
school  and  construing  of  French  into  English ;  and  Richard 
Pencrj^ch  learned  this  manner  of  teaching  of  him,  as  other 
men  did  of  Pencrych.  So  that  now,  the  year  of  our  Lord 
1385  and  of  the  second  King  Richard  after  the  Conquest 
nine,  in  all  the  grammar  schools  of  England  children  leav- 
eth  French,  and  construeth  and  learneth  in  English.  Also 
gentlemen  have  now  much  left  for  to  teach  their  children 
French." 

This  drift  toward  a  general  use  of  the  national  tongue 


506  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


told  powerfully  on  literature.  The  influence  of  the  French 
romances  everywhere  tended  to  make  French  the  one  liter- 
ary language  at  the  opening  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  in  England  this  influence  had  been  backed  by  the 
French  tone  of  the  court  of  Henry  the  Third  and  the  three 
Edwards.  But  at  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Edward  the 
Third  the  long  French  romances  needed  to  be  translated 
even  for  knightly  hearers.  "Let  clerks  indite  in  Latin," 
says  the  author  of  the  "Testament  of  Love,"  "and  let 
Frenchmen  in  their  French  also  indite  their  quaint  terms, 
for  it  is  kindly  to  their  mouths;  and  let  us  show  our  fan- 
tasies in  such  wordes  as  we  learned  of  our  mother's  tongue." 
But  the  new  national  life  afforded  nobler  materials  than 
"fantasies"  now  for  English  literature.  With  the  com- 
pletion of  the  work  of  national  unity  had  come  the  comple- 
tion of  the  work  of  national  freedom.  The  vigor  of  Eng- 
lish life  showed  itself  in  the  wide  extension  of  commerce, 
in  the  progress  of  the  towns,  and  the  upgrowth  of  a  free 
yeomanry.  It  gave  even  nobler  signs  of  its  activity  in 
the  spirit  of  national  independence  and  moral  earnestness 
which  awoke  at  the  call  of  Wyclif .  New  forces  of  thought 
and  feeling  which  were  destined  to  tell  on  every  age  of 
our  later  history  broke  their  way  through  the  crust  of  feu- 
dalism in  the  socialist  revolt  of  the  Lollards,  and  a  sudden 
burst  of  military  gloiy  threw  its  glamour  over  the  age  of 
Cregy  and  Poitiers.  It  is  this  new  gladness  of  a  great 
people  which  utters  itself  in  the  verse  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer. 
Chaucer  was  born  about  1340,  the  son  of  a  London  vintner 
who  lived  in  Thames  Street ;  and  it  was  in  London  that 
the  bulk  of  his  life  was  spent.  His  family,  though  not 
noble,  seems  to  have  been  of  some  importance,  for  from 
the  opening  of  his  career  we  find  Chaucer  in  close  con- 
nection with  the  Court.  At  sixteen  he  was  made  page  to 
the  wife  of  Lionel  of  Clarence;  at  nineteen  he  first  bore 
arms  in  the  campaign  of  1359.  But  he  was  luckless 
enough  to  be  made  prisoner ;  and  from  the  time  of  his  re- 
lease after  the  treaty  of  Bretigny  he  took  no  further  share 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  507 

in  the  military  enterprises  of  his  time.  He  seems  again 
to  have  returned  to  service  about  the  Court,  and  it  was 
now  that  his  first  poems  made  their  appearance,  the 
"  Compleynte  to' Pity"  in  1368,  and  in  1369  the  "Death 
of  Blanch  the  Duchesse,"  the  wife  of  John  of  Gaunt,  who 
from  this  time  at  least  may  be  looked  upon  as  his  patron^ 
It  may  have  been  to  John's  influence  that  he  owed  hie 
employment  in  seven  diplomatic  missions  which  were  prob- 
ably connected  with  the  financial  straits  of  the  Crown, 
Three  of  these,  in  1373,  1374,  and  1378,  carried  him  to 
ItalJ^  He  visited  Genoa  and  the  brilliant  court  of  the 
Visconti  at  Milan;  at  Florence,  where  the  memory  of 
Dante,  the  "great  master"  whom  he  commemorates  so 
reverently  in  his  verse,  was  still  living,  he  may  have  met 
Boccaccio;  at  Padua,  like  his  own  clerk  of  Oxenford,  he 
possibly  caught  the  story  of  Griseldis  from  the  lips  of 
Petrarca. 

It  was  these  visits  to  Italy  which  gave  us  the  Chaucer 
whom  we  know.  From  that  hour  his  work  stands  out  in 
vivid  contrast  with  the  poetic  literature  from  the  heart  of 
which  it  sprang.  The  long  French  romances  were  the 
product  of  an  age  of  wealth  and  ease,  of  indolent  curiosity, 
of  a  fanciful  and  self-indulgent  sentiment.  Of  the  great 
passions  which  gave  life  to  the  Middle  Ages,  that  of  relig- 
ious enthusiasm  had  degenerated  into  the  conceits  of 
Mariolatr}',  that  of  war  into  the  extravagances  of  Chiv- 
alry. Love  indeed  remained;  it  was  the  one  theme  of 
troubadour  and  trouveur;  but  it  was  a  love  of  refinement, 
of  romantic  follies,  of  scholastic  discussions,  of  sensuous 
enjoyment — a  plaything  rather  than  a  passion.  Nature 
had  to  reflect  the  pleasant  indolence  of  man ;  the  song  of 
the  minstrel  moved  through  a  perpetual  May-time;  the 
grass  was  ever  green ;  the  music  of  the  lark  and  the  night- 
ingale rang  out  from  field  and  thicket.  There  was  a  gay 
avoidance  of  all  that  is  serious,  moral,  or  reflective  in 
man's  life :  life  was  too  amusing  to  be  serious,  too  piquant, 
too  sentimental,  too  full  of  interest  and  gayety  and  chat. 


508  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

It  was  an  age  of  talk:  "mirth  is  none,"  says  Chaucer's 
host,  "to  ride  on  by  the  way  dumb  as  a  stone;"  and  the 
Trouveur  aimed  simply  at  being  the  most  agreeable  talker 
of  his  day.  His  romances,  his  rhymes  of  Sir  Tristram,  his 
Romance  of  the  Rose,  are  full  of  color  and  fantasy,  endless 
in  detail,  but  with  a  sort  of  gorgeous  idleness  about  their 
very  length,  the  minuteness  of  their  description  of  outer 
things,  the  vagueness  of  their  touch  when  it  passes  to  the 
subtler  inner  world. 

It  was  with  this  literature  that  Chaucer  had  till  now 
been  familiar,  and  it  was  this  which  he  followed  in  his 
earlier  work.  But  from  the  time  of  his  visits  to  Milan 
and  Genoa  his  sympathies  drew  him  not  to  the  dying  verse 
of  France  but  to  the  new  and  mighty  upgrowth  of  poetry 
in  Italy.  Dante's  eagle  looks  at  him  from  the  sun. 
"Fraunces  Petrark,  the  laureat  poete,"  is  to  him  one 
"whose  rethorique  sweete  enluj^mned  al  Itail  of  poetrie." 
The  "  Troilus"  which  he  produced  about  1382  is  an  enlarged 
English  version  of  Boccaccio's  "  Filostrato ;"  the  Knight's 
Tale,  whose  first  draft  is  of  the  same  period,  bears  slight 
traces  of  his  Teseide.  It  was  indeed  the  "Decameron" 
which  suggested  the  very  form  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales," 
the  earliest  of  which,  such  as  those  of  the  Doctor,  the  Man 
of  Law,  the  Clerk,  the  Prioress,  the  Franklin,  and  the 
Squire,  may  probably  be  referred  like  the  Parliament  of 
Foules  and  the  House  of  Fame  to  this  time  of  Chaucer's 
life.  But  even  while  changing,  as  it  were,  the  front  of 
English  poetry  Chaucer  preserves  his  own  distinct  per- 
sonality. If  he  quizzes  in  the  rhyme  of  Sir  Thopaz  the 
wearisome  idleness  of  the  French  romance  he  retains  all 
that  was  worth  retaining  of  the  French  temper,  its  rapid- 
ity and  agility  of  movement,  its  lightness  and  brilliancy  of 
touch,  its  airy  mockery,  its  gayety  and  good  humor,  its 
critical  coolness  and  self-control.  The  French  wit  quick- 
ens in  him  more  than  in  any  English  writer  the  sturdy 
sense  and  shrewdness  of  our  national  disposition,  ccr»'«cts 
its  extravagance,  and  relieves  its  somewhat  ponderoiato 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  509 

morality.  If  on  the  other  hand  he  echoes  the  joyous  care- 
lessness of  the  Italian  tale,  he  tempers  it  with  the  English 
seriousness.  As  he  follows  Boccaccio  all  his  changes  are 
on  the  side  of  purity ;  and  when  the  Troilus  of  the  Floren- 
tine ends  with  the  old  sneer  at  the  changeableness  of  wo- 
man Chaucer  bids  us  "look  God  ward,"  and  dwells  on  the 
unchangeableness  of  Heaven. 

The  genius  of  Chaucer,  however,  was  neither  French 
nor  Italian,  whatever  element  it  might  borrow  from  eithei 
literature,  but  English  to  the  core;  and  from  the  year  1384 
aU  trace  of  foreign  influence  dies  away.  Chaucer  had  now 
reached  the  climax  of  his  poetic  power.  He  was  a  busy, 
practical  worker,  Comptroller  of  the  Customs  in  1374,  of 
the  Petty  Customs  in  1382,  a  member  of  the  Commons  in 
the  Parliament  of  1386.  The  fall  of  the  Duke  of  Lancas- 
ter from  power  may  have  deprived  him  of  employment  for 
a  time,  but  from  1389  to  1391  he  was  Clerk  of  the  Royal 
Works,  busy  with  repairs  and  building  at  Westminster, 
Windsor,  and  the  Tower.  His  air  indeed  was  that  of  a 
student  rather  than  of  a  man  of  the  world.  A  single  por- 
trait has  preserved  for  us  his  forked  beard,  his  dark-colored 
dress,  the  knife  and  pen-case  at  his  girdle,  and  we  may 
supplement  this  portrait  by  a  few  vivid  touches  of  his 
own.  The  sly,  elvish  face,  the  quick  walk,  the  plump 
figure  and  portly  waist  were  those  of  a  genial  and  humor- 
ous man ;  but  men  jested  at  his  silence,  his  abstraction, 
his  love  of  study.  "  Thou  lookest  as  thou  wouldest  find 
an  hare,"  laughs  the  host,  "and  ever  on  the  ground  I  see 
thee  stare."  He  heard  little  of  his  neighbors'  talk  when 
cflSce  work  in  Thames  Street  was  over.  "  Thou  goest  home 
to  thy  own  house  anon,  and  also  dumb  as  a  stone  thou 
sittest  at  another  book  till  fully  dazed  is  thy  look,  and 
livest  thus  as  an  heremite,  although,"  he  adds  slyly,  "thy 
abstinence  is  lite,"  or  little.  But  of  this  seeming  abstrac- 
tion from  the  world  about  him  there  is  not  a  trace  in 
Chaucer's  verse.  We  see  there  how  keen  his  observation 
was,  how  vivid  and  intense  his  sympathy  with  nature  and 


510  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

the  men  among  whom  he  moved.  "Farewell,  my  book," 
he  cried  as  spring  came  after  winter  and  the  lark's  song 
roused  him  at  dawn  to  spend  hours  gazing  alone  on  the 
daisy  whose  beauty  he  sang.  But  field  and  stream  and 
flower  and  bird,  much  as  he  loved  them,  were  less  to  him 
than  man.  No  poetry  was  ever  more  human  than  Chau- 
cer's, none  ever  came  more  frankly  and  genially  home  to 
men  than  his  "Canterbury  Tales." 

It  was  the  continuation  and  revision  of  this  work  which 
mainly  occupied  him  during  the  years  from  1384  to  1390. 
Its  best  stories,  those  of  the  Miller,  the  Reeve,  the  Cook, 
the  Wife  of  Batl^,  the  Merchant,  the  Friar,  the  Nun,  the 
Priest,  and  the  Pardoner,  are  ascribed  to  this  period,  as 
well  as  the  Prologue.  The  framework  which  Chaucer 
chose — that  of  a  pilgrimage  from  London  to  Canterbury 
— not  only  enabled  him  to  string  these  tales  together,  but 
lent  itself  admirably  to  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  his 
poetic  temper,  his  dramatic  versatility  and  the  universality 
of  his  sympathy.  His  tales  cover  the  whole  field  of  mediae- 
val poetry ;  the  legend  of  the  priest,  the  knightly  romance, 
the  wonder-tale  of  the  traveller,  the  broad  humor  of  th(» 
fabliau,  allegory  and  apologue,  all  are  there.  He  finds  a 
yet  wider  scope  for  his  genius  in  the  persons  who  tell  these 
stories,  the  thirty  pilgrims  who  start  in  the  May  morning 
from  the  Tabard  in  Southwark — thirty  distinct  figures, 
representatives  of  every  class  of  English  society  from  the 
noble  to  the  ploughman.  We  see  the  "verray  perfight 
gentil  knight"  in  cassock  and  coat  of  mail,  with  his  curly- 
headed  squire  beside  him,  fresh  as  the  May  morning,  and 
behind  them  the  brown-faced  yeoman  in  his  coat  and  hood 
of  green  with  a  mighty  bow  in  his  hand.  A  group  of 
ecclesiastics  light  up  for  us  the  mediaeval  church — the 
brawny  hunt-loving  monk,  whose  bridle  jingles  as  loud 
and  clear  as  the  chapel  bell ; — the  wanton  friar,  first  among 
the  beggars  and  harpers  of  the  courtly  side — the  poor  par- 
son, threadbare,  learned,  and  devout  ("  Christ's  lore  and 
his  apostles  twelve  he  taught,  and  first  hue  followed  it  him- 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  611 

self") — the  summoner  with  his  fiery  face — the  pardoner 
with  his  wallet  "  bret  full  of  pardons,  come  from  Rome  all 
hot" — the  lively,  prioress  with  her  courtly  French  lisp, 
her  soft  little  red  mouth,  and  "  Amor  vincit  omnia"  graven 
on  her  brooch.     Learning  is  there  in  the  portly  person  of 
the  doctor  of  physics,  rich  with  the  profits  of  the  pestilence 
—the  busy  sergeant-of-law,  "  that  ever  seemed  busier  than 
he  was" — the  hollow-cheeked  clerk  of  Oxford  with  his  love 
of  books  and  short  sharp  sentences  that  disguise  a  latent 
tenderness  which  breaks  out  at  last  in  the  story  of  Griseldis. 
Around  them  crowd  tj^pss  of  English  industry ;   the  mer- 
chant ;   the  franklin  in  whose  house  "  it  snowed  of  meat 
and  drink ;"  the  sailor  fresh  from  frays  in  the  Channel ; 
the  buxom  wife  of  Bath ;  the  broad-shouldered  miller ;  the 
haberdasher,  carpenter,  weaver,  dyer,  tapestry-maker,  each 
in  the  livery  of  his  craft;   and  last  the  honest  ploughman 
who  would  dyke  and  delve  for  the  poor  without  hire.     It 
is  the  first  time  in  English  poetry  that  we  are  brought  face 
to  face  not  with  characters  or  allegories  or  reminiscences 
of  the  past,  but  with  living  and  breathing  men,  men  dis- 
tinct in  temper  and  sentiment  as  in  face  or  costume  or 
mode  of  speech ;   and  with  this  distinctness  of  each  main- 
tained throughout  the  story  by  a  thousand  shades  of  ex- 
pression and  action.     It  is  the  first  time,  too,  that  we  meet 
with  the  dramatic   power  which  not  only  creates  each 
character  but  combines  it  with  its  fellows,  which  not  only 
adjusts  each  tale  or  jest  to  the  temper  of  the  person  who 
utters  it  but  fuses  all  into  a  poetic  unity.     It  is  life  in  its 
largeness,  its  variety,  its  complexity,  which  surrounds  us 
in  the  "  Canterbury  Tales."     In  some  of  the  stories  indeed, 
which  were  composed  no  doubt  at  an  earlier  time,  there 
is  the  tedium  of  the  old  romance  or  the  pedantry  of  the 
schoolman;  but  taken  as  a  whole  the  poem  is  the  work  not 
of  a  man  of  letters  but  of  a  man  of  action.     Chaucer  has 
received  his  training  from  war,  courts,  business,  travel— 
a  training  not  of  books  but  of  life.     And  it  is  life  that  he 
loves— the  delicacy  of  its  sentiment,  the  breadth  of  its 


512  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV, 

farce,  its  laughter  and  its  tears,  the  tenderness  of  its  Gri- 
seldis  or  the  Smollett-like  adventures  of  the  miller  and  the 
clerks.  It  is  this  largeness  of  heart,  this  wide  tolerance, 
which  enables  him  to  reflect  man  for  us  as  none  but  Shaks- 
pere  has  ever  reflected  him,  and  to  do  this  with  a  pathos, 
a  shrewd  sense  and  kindly  humor,  a  freshness  and  joyous- 
ness  of  feeling,  that  even  Shakspere  has  not  surpassed. 

The  last  ten  years  of  Chaucer's  life  saw  a  few  more  tales 
added  to  the  Pilgrimage  and  a  few  poems  to  his  work; 
but  his  power  was  lessening,  and  in  1400  he  rested  from 
his  labors  in  his  last  home,  a  house  in  the  garden  of  St. 
Mary's  Chapel  at  Westminster.  His  body  rests  within  the 
Abbey  church.  It  was  strange  that  such  a  voice  should 
have  awakened  no  echo  in  the  singers  that  follow,  but  the 
first  burst  of  English  song  died  as  suddenly  in  Chaucer  as 
the  hope  and  glory  of  his  age.  He  died  indeed  at  the 
moment  of  a  revolution  which  was  the  prelude  to  years  of 
national  discord  and  national  suffering.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  grounds  of  his  action,  the  rule  of  Richard 
the  Second  after  his  assumption  of  power  had  shown  his 
capacity  for  self-restraint.  Parted  by  his  own  will  from 
the  counsellors  of  his  youth,  calling  to  his  service  the 
Lords  Appellant,  reconciled  alike  with  the  baronage  and 
the  Parliament,  the  young  King  promised  to  be  among  the 
noblest  and  wisest  rulers  that  England  had  seen.  But  the 
violent  and  haughty  temper  which  underlay  this  self-com- 
mand showed  itself  from  time  to  time.  The  Earl  of 
Arundel  and  his  brother  the  bishop  stood  in  the  front  rank 
of  the  party  which  had  coerced  Richard  in  his  early  days; 
their  influence  was  great  in  the  new  government.  But  a 
strife  between  the  Earl  and  John  of  Gaunt  revived  the 
King's  resentment  at  the  past  action  of  his  house;  and  at 
the  funeral  of  Anne  of  Bohemia  in  1394  a  fancied  slight 
roused  Richard  to  a  burst  of  passion.  He  struck  the  Earl 
so  violently  that  the  blow  drew  blood.  But  the  quarrel 
was  patched  up,  and  the  reconciliation  was  followed  by 
the  elevation  of  Bishop  Arundel  to  the  vacant  Primacy  in 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461. 


1396.  In  the  preceding  year  Richard  had  crossed  to  Ire- 
land and  in  a  short  autumn  campaign  reduced  its  native 
chiefs  again  to  submission.  Fears  of  Lollard  disturbances 
soon  recalled  him,  but  these  died  at  the  King's  presence, 
and  Richard  was  able  to  devote  himself  to  the  negotiation 
of  a  mart-iage  which  was  to  be  the  turning-point  of  his 
reign.  His  policy  throughout  the  recent  years  had  been  a 
policy  of  peace.  It  was  war  which  rendered  the  Crown 
helpless  before  the  Parliament,  and  peace  was  needful  if 
the  work  of  constant  progress  was  not  to  be  undone.  But 
the  short  truces,  renewed  from  time  to  time,  which  he  had 
as  yet  secured  were  insufficient  for  this  purpose,  for  so  long 
as  war  might  break  out  in  the  coming  year  the  King's 
hands  were  tied.  The  impossibility  of  renouncing  the 
claim  to  the  French  crown  indeed  made  a  formal  peace 
impossible,  but  its  ends  might  be  secured  by  a  lengthened 
truce,  and  it  was  with  a  view  to  this  that  Richard  in  1396 
wedded  Isabella,  the  daughter  of  Charles  the  Sixth  of 
France.  The  bride  was  a  mere  child,  but  she  brought 
with  her  a  renewal  of  the  truce  for  eight-and-twenty  years. 
The  match  was  hardl}'  concluded  when  the  veil  under 
which  Richard  had  shrouded  his  real  temper  began  to  be 
dropped.  His  craving  for  absolute  power,  such  as  he  wit- 
nessed in  the  Court  of  France,  was  probably  intensified 
from  this  moment  by  a  mental  disturbance  which  gathered 
strength  as  the  months  went  on.  As  if  to  preclude  any 
revival  of  the  war  Richard  had  surrendered  Cherbourg  to 
the  King  of  Navarre  and  now  gave  back  Brest  to  the  Duke 
of  Brittany,  He  was  said  to  have  pledged  himself  at  liis 
wedding  to  restore  Calais  to  the  King  of  France.  But 
once  freed  from  all  danger  of  such  a  struggle  the  whole 
character  of  his  rule  seemed  to  change.  His  court  became 
as  crowded  and  profuse  as  his  grandfather's.  Money  was 
recklessly  borrowed  and  as  recklessly  squandered.  The 
King's  pride  became  insane,  and  it  was  fed  with  dreams 
of  winning  the  Imperial  crown  through  the  deposition  of 
Wenzel  of  Bohemia,  Th*^  councillors  with  whom  he  had 
Vol,  1,-33 


514  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

acted  since  his  resumption  of  authority  saw  themselves 
powerless.  John  of  Gaunt  indeed  still  retained  influence 
over  the  King.  It  was  the  support  of  the  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster after  his  return  from  his  Spanish  campaign  which 
had  enabled  Richard  to  hold  in  check  the  Duke  of  Gloucester 
and  the  party  that  he  led ;  and  the  anxiety  of  the  young 
King  to  retain  this  support  was  seen  in  his  grant  of  Aqui- 
taine  to  his  uncle,  and  in  the  legitimation  of  the  Beauforts, 
John's  children  by  a  mistress,  Catharine  Swinford,  whom 
he  married  after  the  death  of  his  second  wife.  The  friend- 
ship of  the  Duke  brought  with  it  the  adhesion  of  one  even 
more  important,  his  son  Henry  the  Earl  of  Derby.  As 
heir  through  his  mother,  Blanche  of  Lancaster,  to  the 
estates  and  influence  of  the  Lancastrian  house,  Henry  was 
the  natural  head  of  a  constitutional  opposition,  and  his 
weight  was  increased  by  a  marriage  with  the  heiress  of 
the  house  of  Bohun.  He  had  taken  a  prominent  part  in 
the  overthrow  of  Suffolk  and  De  Vere,  and  on  the  King's 
resumption  of  power  he  had  prudently  withdrawn  from 
the  realm  on  a  vow  of  Crusade,  had  touched  at  Barbary, 
visited  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  and  in  1390  sailed  fo^'  Dantzig 
and  taken  part  in  a  campaign  against  the  heathen  Prus- 
sians with  the  Teutonic  Knights.  Since  his  return  he  had 
silently  followed  in  his  father's  track.  But  the  counsels 
of  John  of  Gaunt  were  hardly  wiser  than  of  old ;  Arundel 
had  already  denounced  his  influence  as  a  hurtful  one ;  and 
in  the  events  which  were  now  to  hurry  quickly  on  he  seems 
to  have  gone  hand  in  hand  with  the  King. 

A.  new  uneasiness  was  seen  in  the  Parliament  of  1 397, 
and  the  Commons  prayed  for  a  redress  of  the  profusion  of 
the  Court.  Richard  at  once  seized  on  the  opportunity  for 
a  struggle.  He  declared  himself  grieved  that  his  subjects 
should  "  take  on  themselves  any  ordinance  or  governance 
of  the  person  of  the  King  or  his  hostel  or  of  any  persons  of 
estate  whom  he  might  be  pleased  to  have  in  his  company." 
The  Commons  were  at  once  overawed ;  they  owned  that 
the  cognizance  of  such  matters  belonged  wholly  to  the 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  515 

King,  and  gave  up  to  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  the  name  of 
the  member,  Sir,Thomas  Haxey,  who  had  brought  forward 
this  article  of  their  prayer.  The  lords  pronounced  him  a 
traitor,  and  his  life  was  only  saved  by  the  fact  that  he  was 
a  clergyman  and  by  the  interposition  of  A^-ohbishop 
Arundel.  The  Earl  of  Arundel  and  the  Duke  of  Gloucester 
at  once  withdrew  from  Court.  They  stood  almost  alone, 
for  of  the  royal  house  the  Dukes  of  Lancaster  and  York 
with  their  sons  the  Earls  of  Derby  and  Rutland  were  now 
with  the  King,  and  the  old  coadjutor  of  Gloucester,  the  Earl 
of  Nottingham,  was  in  high  favor  with  him.  The  Earl 
of  Warwick  alone  joined  them,  and  he  was  included  in  a 
charge  of  conspiracy  which  was  followed  by  the  arrest  of 
the  three.  A  fresh  Parliament  in  September  was  packed 
with  royal  partisans,  and  Richard  moved  boldly  to  his  end. 
The  pardons  of  the  Lords  Appellant  were  revoked.  Arch- 
bishop Arundel  was  impeached  and  banished  from  the 
realm,  he  was  transferred  by  the  Pope  to  the  See  of  St. 
Andrew's,  and  the  Primacy  given  to  Roger  Walden.  The 
Earl  of  Arundel,  accused  before  the  Peers  under  John  of 
Gaunt  as  High  Steward,  was  condemned  and  executed  in 
a  single  day.  Warwick,  who  owned  the  truth  of  the 
charge,  was  condemned  to  perpetual  imprisonment.  The 
Duke  of  Gloucester  was  saved  from  a  trial  by  a  sudden 
death  in  his  prison  at  Calais.  A  new  Parliament  at  Shrews- 
bury in  the  opening  of  1398  completed  the  King's  work. 
In  three  days  it  declared  null  the  proceedings  of  the  Par- 
liament of  1388,  granted  to  the  King  a  subsidy  on  wool 
and  leather  for  his  life,  and  delegated  its  authority  to  a 
standing  committee  of  eighteen  members  from  both  Houses 
with  power  to  continue  their  sittings  even  after  the  disso- 
lution of  the  Parliament  and  to  "  examine  and  determine 
all  matters  and  subjects  which  had  been  moved  in  the 
presence  of  the  King  with  all  the  dependencies  thereof." 

In  a  single  year  the  whole  color  of  Richard's  govern- 
ment had  changed.  He  had  revenged  himself  on  the  men 
who  had  once  held  him  down,  and  his  revenge  was  hardly 


516  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

taken  before  he  disclosed  a  plan  of  absolute  government. 
He  had  used  the  Parliament  to  strike  down  the  Primate 
as  well  as  the  greatest  nobles  of  the  realm,  and  to  give  him 
a  revenue  for  life  which  enabled  him  to  get  rid  of  Parlia- 
ment itself,  for  the  Permanent  Committee  which  it  named 
were  men  devoted,  as  Richard  held,  to  his  cause.  John  of 
Gaunt  was  at  its  head,  and  the  rest  of  its  lords  were  those 
who  had  backed  the  King  in  his  blow  at  Gloucester  and 
the  Arundels.  Two  however  were  excluded.  In  the  gen- 
eral distribution  of  rewards  which  followed  Gloucester's 
overthrow  the  Earl  of  Derby  had  been  made  Duke  of  Here- 
ford, the  Earl  of  Nottingham  Duke  of  Norfolk,  But  at 
the  close  of  1397  the  two  Dukes  charged  each  other  with 
treasonable  talk  as  they  rode  between  Brentford  and  Lon- 
don, and  the  Permanent  Committee  ordered  the  matter  to 
be  settled  by  a  single  combat.  In  September  1398  the 
Dukes  entered  the  lists;  but  Richard  forbade  the  duel, 
sentenced  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  to  banishment  for  life,  and 
Henry  of  Lancaster  to  exile  for  six  years.  As  Henry  left 
London  the  streets  were  crowded  with  people  weeping  for 
his  fate ;  some  followed  him  even  to  the  coast.  But  his 
withdrawal  removed  the  last  check  on  Richard's  despotism. 
He  forced  from  every  tenant  of  the  Crown  an  oath  to  rec- 
ognize the  acts  of  his  Committee  as  valid,  and  to  oppose 
any  attempts  to  alter  or  revoke  them.  Forced  loans,  the 
sale  of  charters  of  pardon  to  Gloucester's  adherents,  the 
outlawry  of  seven  counties  at  once  on  the  plea  that  they 
had  supported  his  enemies  and  must  purchase  pardon,  a 
reckless  interference  with  the  course  of  justice,  roused  into 
new  life  the  old  discontent.  Even  this  might  have  been 
defied  had  not  Richard  set  an  able  and  unscrupulous  leader 
at  its  head.  Leave  had  been  given  to  Henry  of  Lancaster 
to  receive  his  father's  inheritance  on  the  death  of  John  of 
Gaunt,  in  February  1399.  But  an  ordinance  of  the  Con- 
tinual Committee  annulled  this  permission  and  Richard 
seized  the  Lancastrian  estates.  Archbishop  Arundel  at 
once  saw  the  chance  of  dealing  blow  for  blow.     He.  has- 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  517 

tened  to  Paris  and  pressed  the  Duke  to  return  to  England, 
telling  him  how  all  men  there  looked  for  it,  "  especially  the 
Londoners,  wko  loved  him  a  hundred  times  more  than  they 
did  the  King."  For  a  while  Henry  remained  buried  in 
thought,  "leaning  on  a  window  overlooking  a  garden;" 
but  Arundel's  pressure  at  last  prevailed,  he  made  his  way 
secretly  to  Brittany,  and  with  fifteen  knights  set  sail  from 
Vannes. 

What  had  really  decided  him  was  the  opportunity  offered 
by  Richard's  absence  from  the  realm.  From  the  opening 
of  his  reign  the  King's  attention  had  been  constantly 
drawn  to  his  dependent  lordship  of  Ireland.  More  than 
two  hundred  years  had  passed  away  since  the  troubles 
which  followed  the  murder  of  Archbishop  Thomas  forced 
Henry  the  Second  to  leave  his  work  of  conquest  unfinished, 
and  the  opportunity  for  a  complete  reduction  of  the  island 
which  had  been  lost  then  had  never  returned.  When 
Henry  quitted  Ireland  indeed  Leinster  was  wholly  in  Eng- 
lish hands,  Connaught  bowed  to  a  nominal  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  English  overlordship,  and  for  a  while  the  work 
of  conquest  seemed  to  go  steadily  on.  John  de  Courcy 
penetrated  into  Ulster  and  established  himself  at  Down- 
Patrick;  and  Henry  planned  the  establishment  of  his 
youngest  son,  John,  as  Lord  of  Ireland.  But  the  levity 
of  the  young  prince,  who  mocked  the  rude  dresses  of  the 
native  chieftains  and  plucked  them  in  insult  by  the  beard, 
soon  forced  his  father  to  recall  him;  and  in  the  continent- 
al struggle  which  soon  opened  on  the  Angevin  kings,  as  in 
the  constitutional  struggle  within  England  itself  which 
followed  it,  all  serious  purpose  of  completing  the  conquest 
of  Ireland  was  forgotten.  Nothing  indeed  but  the  feuds  and 
weakness  of  the  Irish  tribes  enabled  the  adventurers  to  hold 
the  districts  of  Drogheda,  Dublin,  Wexford,  Waterford, 
and  Cork,  which  formed  what  was  thenceforth  known  as 
"  the  English  Pale."  In  all  the  history  of  Ireland  no  event 
has  proved  more  disastrous  than  this  half-finished  con- 
quest.    Had  the  Irish  driven  their  invaders  into  the  sea, 


518  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

or  the  English  succeeded  in  the  complete  reduction  of  the 
island,  the  misery  of  its  after-ages  might  have  been  avoided. 
A  struggle  such  as  that  in  which  Scotland  drove  out  itn 
concjuerors  might  have  produced  a  spirit  of  patriotism  and 
national  union  which  would  have  formed  a  people  out  of 
the  mass  of  warring  clans.  A  conquest  such  as  that  in 
which  the  Normans  made  England  their  own  would  have 
spread  at  any  rate  the  law,  the  order,  the  civilization  of  the 
conquering  country  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  cou' 
quered.  Unhappily  Ireland,  while  powerless  to  effect  its 
entire  deliverance,  was  strong  enough  to  hold  its  assailants 
partially  at  ba3%  The  country  was  broken  into  two  halves 
whose  conflict  has  never  ceased.  So  far  from  either  giv- 
ing elements  of  civilization  or  good  government  to  the 
other,  conqueror  and  conquered  reaped  only  degradation 
from  the  ceaseless  conflict.  The  native  tribes  lost  what- 
ever tendency  to  union  or  social  progress  had  survived  the 
invasion  of  the  Danes.  Their  barbarism  was  intensified 
by  their  hatred  of  the  more  civilized  intruders.  But  these 
intruders  themselves,  penned  within  the  narrow  limits  of 
the  Pale,  brutalized  by  a  merciless  conflict,  cut  off  from 
contact  with  the  refining  influences  of  a  larger  world,  sank 
rapidly  to  the  level  of  the  barbarism  about  them :  and  the 
lawlessness,  the  ferocity,  the  narrowness  of  feudalism 
broke  out  unchecked  in  this  horde  of  adventurers  who  held 
the  land  by  their  sword. 

From  the  first  the  story  of  the  English  Pale  was  a  story 
of  degradation  and  anarchy.  It  needed  the  stern  ven- 
geance of  John,  whose  army  stormed  its  strongholds  and 
drove  its  leading  barons  into  exile,  to  preserve  even  their 
fealty  to  the  English  Crown.  John  divided  the  Pale  into 
counties  and  ordered  the  observance  of  the  English  law; 
but  the  departure  of  his  army  was  the  signal  for  a  return 
of  the  disorder  he  had  trampled  under  foot.  Between  Eng- 
lishmen and  Irishmen  went  on  a  ceaseless  and  pitiless  war. 
Every  Irishman  without  the  Pale  was  counted  by  the  Eng- 
lish settlers  an  enemy  and  a  robber  whose  murder  found 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  519 


no  cognizance  or  punishment  at  the  hands  of  the  law. 
Half  the  subsistence  of  the  English  barons  was  drawn 
from  forays  across  the  border,  and  these  forays  were 
avenged  by  incursions  of  native  marauders  which  carried 
havoc  at  times  to  the  very  walls  of  Dublin.  Within  the 
Pale  itself  the  misery  was  hardly  less.  The  English  set- 
tlers were  harried  and  oppressed  by  their  own  baronage  as 
much  as  by  the  Irish  marauders,  while  the  feuds  of  the 
English  lords  wasted  their  strength  and  prevented  any 
effective  combination  either  for  common  conquest  or  com- 
mon defence.  So  utter  seemed  their  weakness  that  Rob- 
ert Bruce  saw  in  it  an  opportunity  for  a  counter-blow  at 
his  English  assailants,  and  his  victory  at  Bannockburn 
was  followed  up  by  the  dispatch  of  a  Scotch  force  to  Ire- 
land with  his  brother  Edward  at  its  head.  A  general  ris- 
ing of  the  Irish  welcomed  this  deliverer ;  but  the  danger 
drove  the  barons  of  the  Pale  to  a  momentary  union,  and 
in  1316  their  valor  was  proved  on  the  bloodj"  field  of  Athen- 
ree  by  the -slaughter  of  eleven  thousand  of  their  foes  and 
the  almost  complete  annihilation  of  the  sept  of  the  O'Con- 
nors. But  with  victory  returned  the  old  anarchy  and  deg- 
radation. The  barons  of  the  Pale  sank  more  and  more 
into  Irish  chieftains.  The  Fitz-Maurices,  who  became 
Earls  of  Desmond  and  whose  vast  territory  in  Munster 
was  erected  into  a  County  Palatine,  adopted  the  dress  and 
manners  of  the  natives  around  them.  The  rapid  growth 
of  this  evil  was  seen  in  the  ruthless  provisions  by  which 
Edward  the  Third  strove  to  check  it  in  his  Statute  of  Kil- 
kenny. The  Statute  forbade  the  adoption  of  the  Irish  lan- 
guage or  name  or  dress  by  any  man  of  English  blood :  it 
enforced  within  the  Pale  the  exclusive  use  of  English  law, 
and  made  the  use  of  the  native  or  Brehon  law,  which  was 
gaining  ground,  an  act  of  treason;  it  made  treasonable 
any  marriage  of  the  Englishry  with  persons  of  Irish  race, 
or  any  adoption  of  English  children  by  Irish  foster-fathers. 
But  stern  as  they  were  these  provisions  proved  fniitless 
tv'  check  the  fusion  of  the  two  races,  while  the  growing 


520  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [BOOK  IV. 

independence  of  the  Lords  of  the  Pale  threw  off  all  but  the 
semblance  of  obedience  to  the  English  government.  It 
was  this  which  stirred  Richard  to  a  serious  effort  for  the 
conquest  and  organization  of  the  island.  In  1386  he 
granted  the  "  entire  dominion"  of  Ireland  with  the  title  of 
its  Duke  to  Robert  de  Vere  on  condition  of  his  carrj'ing 
out  its  utter  reduction.  But  the  troubles  of  the  reign  soon 
recalled  De  Vere,  and  it  was  not  till  the  truce  with  France 
had  freed  his  hands  that  the  King  again  took  up  his  pro- 
jects of  conquest.  In  x394  he  landed  with  an  army  at 
Waterford,  and  received  the  general  submission  of  the 
native  chieftains.  But  the  Lords  of  the  Pale  held  sullenly 
aloof ;  and  Richard  had  no  sooner  quitted  the  island  than 
the  Irish  in  turn  refused  to  carrj^  out  their  promise  of  quit- 
ting Leinster,  and  engaged  in  a  fresh  contest  with  the 
Earl  of  March,  whom  the  King  had  proclaimed  as  his  heir 
and  left  behind  him  as  his  lieutenant  in  Ireland.  In  the 
summer  of  1398  March  was  beaten  and  slain  in  battle:  and 
Richard  resolved  to  avenge  his  cousin's  death  and  complete 
the  work  he  had  begun  by  a  fresh  invasion.  He  felt  no 
apprehension  of  danger.  At  home  his  triumph  seemed 
complete.  The  death  of  Norfolk,  the  exile  of  Henry  of 
Lancaster,  left  the  baronage  without  heads  for  any  rising. 
He  insured,  as  he  believed,  the  loyalty  of  the  great  houses 
by  the  hostages  of  their  blood  whom  he  carried  with  him, 
at  whose  head  was  Henry  of  Lancaster's  son,  the  future 
Henry  the  Fifth.  The  refusal  of  the  Percies,  the  Earl  of 
Northumberland  and  his  son  Henry  Percy  or  Hotspur,  to 
obe}^  his  summons  might  have  warned  him  that  danger 
was  brewing  in  the  north.  Richard,  however,  took  little 
heed.  He  banished  the  Percies,  who  withdrew  into  Scot- 
land ;  and  sailed  for  Ireland  at  the  end  of  May,  leaving 
his  uncle  the  Duke  of  York  regent  in  his  stead. 

The  opening  of  his  campaign  was  indecisive,  and  it  was 
not  till  fresh  reinforcements  arrived  at  Dublin  that  the 
King  could  prepare  for  a  march  into  the  heart  of  the  island. 
But  while  he  planned  the  conquest  of  Ireland  the  news 


Chap.  4.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.    1307—1461  521 

came  that  England  was  lost.  Little  more  than  a  month 
had  passed  af  ter^  his  departure  when  Henry  of  Lancaster 
entered  the  Humber  and  landed  at  Ravenspur.  He  came, 
he  said,  to  claim  his  heritage;  and  three  of  his  Yorkshire 
castles  at  once  threw  open  their  gates.  The  two  great 
houses  of  the  north  joined  him  at  once.  Ralph  Neville, 
the  Earl  of  Westmoreland,  had  married  his  half-sister; 
the  Percies  came  from  their  exile  over  the  Scottish  border. 
As  he  pushed  quickly  to  the  south  all  resistance  broke 
down.  The  army  which  the  Regent  gathered  refused  to 
do  hurt  to  the  Duke ;  London  called  him  to  her  gates ;  and 
the  royal  Council  could  only  march  hastily  on  Bristol  in 
the  hope  of  securing  that  port  for  the  King's  return.  But 
the  town  at  once  yielded  to  Henry's  summons,  the  Regent 
submitted  to  him,  and  with  an  army  which  grew  at  every 
step  the  Duke  marched  upon  Cheshire,  where  Richard's 
adherents  were  gathering  in  arms  to  meet  the  King. 
Contrary  winds  had  for  a  while  kept  Richard  ignorant  of 
his  cousin's  progress,  and  even  when  the  news  reached 
him  he  was  in  a  web  of  treachery.  The  Duke  of  Albe- 
marle, the  son  of  the  Regent  Duke  of  York,  was  beside 
him,  and  at  his  persuasion  the  King  abandoned  his  first 
purpose  of  returning  at  once,  and  sent  the  Earl  of  Salis- 
bury to  Conway  while  he  himself  waited  to  gather  his 
army  and  fleet.  The  six  days  he  proposed  to  gather  them 
in  became  sixteen,  and  the  delay  proved  fatal  to  his  cause. 
As  no  news  came  of  Richard  the  Welshmen  who  flocked 
to  Salisbury's  camp  dispersed  on  Henry's  advance  to  Cbes- 
ier.  Henry  was  in  fact  master  of  the  realm  at  the  open- 
ing of  August  when  Richard  at  last  sailed  from  Waterford 
and  landed  at  Milford  Haven. 

Every  road  was  blocked,  and  the  news  that  all  was  lost 
told  on  the  thirty  thousand  men  he  brought  with  him.  In 
a  single  day  but  six  thousand  remained,  and  even  these 
dispersed  when  it  was  found  that  the  King  had  ridden  off 
disguised  as  a  friar  to  join  the  force  which  he  believed  to 
be  awaiting  him  in  North  Wales  with  Salisbury  at  its 


522  HIST0II\    OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  FV. 

head.  He  reached  Caernarvon  only  to  find  this  force 
already  disbanded,  and  throwing  himself  into  the  castle 
dispatched  his  kinsmen,  the  Dukes  of  Exeter  and  Surrey, 
to  Chester  to  negotiate  with  Henry  of  Lancaster.  But 
they  were  detained  there  while  the  Earl  of  Northumber- 
land pushed  forward  with  a  picked  body  of  men,  and 
securing  the  castles  of  the  coast  at  last  sought  an  inter- 
view with  Richard  at  Conway.  The  King's  confidence 
was  still  unbroken.  He  threatened  to  raise  a  force  of 
Welshmen  and  to  put  Lancaster  to  death.  Deserted  as  he 
was  indeed,  a  King  was  in  himself  a  power,  and  only  the 
treacherous  pledges  of  the  Earl  induced  him  to  set  aside 
his  plans  for  a  reconciliation  to  be  brought  about  in  Par- 
liament and  to  move  from  Conway  on  the  promise  of  a 
conference  with  Henry  at  Flint.  But  he  had  no  sooner 
reached  the  town  than  he  found  himself  surrounded  by 
Lancaster's  forces.  "I  am  betrayed,"  he  cried,  as  the 
view  of  his  enemies  burst  on  him  from  the  hill ;  "  there 
are  pennons  and  banners  in  the  valley."  But  it  was  too 
late  for  retreat.  Richard  was  seized  and  brought  before 
his  cousin.  "  I  am  come  before  my  time,"  said  Lancaster, 
"but  I  will  show  you  the  reason.  Your  people,  my  lord, 
complain  that  for  the  space  of  twenty  years  you  have 
ruled  them  harshly :  however  if  it  please  God,  I  will  help 
you  to  rule  them  better."  "Fair  cousin,"  replied  the 
King,  "since  it  pleases  you,  it  pleases  me  well."  Then, 
breaking  in  private  into  passionate  regrets  that  he  had 
ever  spared  his  cousin's  life,  he  suffered  himself  to  be 
carried  a  prisoner  along  the  road  to  London. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   HOUSE  OF  LANCASTER. 

1399—1423, 

Once  safe  in  the  Tower,  it  was  easy  to  wrest  from  Rich- 
ard a  resignation  of  his  crown ;  and  this  resignation  was 
solemnly  accepted  by  the  Parliament  which  met  at  the 
close  of  September,  1399.  But  the  resignation  was  con- 
firmed by  a  solemn  Act  of  Deposition.  The  coronation 
oath  was  read,  and  a  long  impeachment  which  stated  the 
breach  of  the  promises  made  in  it  was  followed  by  a  sol- 
emn vote  of  both  Houses  which  removed  Richard  from  the 
state  and  authority  of  King.  According  to  the  strict  rules 
of  hereditary  descent  as  construed  by  the  feudal  law5'ers 
by  an  assumed  analogy  with  the  rules  which  governed  de- 
scent of  ordinary  estates  the  crown  would  now  have  passed 
to  a  house  which  had  at  an  earlier  period  played  a  leading 
part  in  the  revolutions  of  the  Edwards.  The  great-grand- 
son of  the  Mortimer  who  brought  about  the  deposition  of 
Edward  the  Second  had  married  the  daughter  and  heiress 
of  Lionel  of  Clarence,  the  third  son  of  Edward  the  Third. 
The  childlessness  of  Richard  and  the  death  of  Edward's 
second  son  without  issue  placed  Edmund  Mortimer,  the 
son  of  the  Earl  who  had  fallen  in  Ireland,  first  among  the 
claimants  of  the  crown ;  but  he  was  now  a  child  of  six 
years  old,  the  strict  rule  of  hereditary  descent  had  never 
received  any  formal  recognition  in  the  case  of  the  Crown, 
and  precedent  suggested  a  right  of  Parliament  to  choose 
in  such  a  case  a  successor  among  any  other  members  of^ 
the  Royal  House.  Only  one  such  successor  was  in  fact 
possible.  Rising  from  his  seat  and  crossing  himself, 
Henry  of  Lancaster  solemnly  challenged  the  crown,  "  as 


624  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV- 

that  I  am  descended  by  right  line  of  blood  coming  from 
the  good  lord  King  Henry  the  Third,  and  through  that 
right  that  God  of  his  grace  hath  sent  me  with  help  of  my 
kin  and  of  my  friends  to  recover  it :  the  which  realm  was 
in  point  to  be  undone  by  default  of  governance  and  un- 
doing of  good  laws."  Whatever  defects  such  a  claim 
might  present  were  more  than  covered  by  the  solemn  rec- 
ognition of  Parliament.  The  two  Archbishops,  taking 
the  new  sovereign  by  the  hand,  seated  him  upon  the 
throne,  and  Henry  in  emphatic  words  ratified  the  compact 
between  himself  and  his  people.  "Sirs,"  he  said  to  the 
prelates,  lords,  knights,  and  burgesses  gathered  round  him, 
"  I  thank  God  and  you,  spiritual  and  temporal,  and  all 
estates  of  the  land ;  and  do  you  to  wit  it  is  not  my  will 
that  any  man  think  that  by  way  of  conquest  I  would  dis- 
inherit any  of  his  heritage,  franchises,  or  other  rights  that 
he  ought  to  have,  nor  put  him  out  of  the  good  that  he  has 
and  has  had  by  the  good  laws  and  customs  of  the  realm, 
except  those  persons  that  have  been  against  the  good  pur^ 
pose  and  the  common  profit  of  the  realm." 

The  deposition  of  a  king,  the  setting  aside  of  one  claim^ 
ant  and  the  elevation  of  another  to  the  throne,  marked  the 
triumph  of  the  English  Parliament  over  the  monarchy. 
The  struggle  of  the  Edwards  against  its  gradual  advance 
had  culminated  in  the  bold  effort  of  Richard  the  Second 
to  supersede  it  by  a  commission  dependent  on  the  Crown. 
But  the  House  of  Lancaster  was  precluded  by  its  very 
position  from  any  renewal  of  the  struggle.  It  was  not 
merely  that  the  exhaustion  of  the  treasury  by  the  war  and 
revolt  which  followed  Henry's  accession  left  him  even 
more  than  the  kings  who  had  gone  before  in  the  hands  of 
the  Estates;  it  was  that  his  very  right  to  the  Crown  lay 
in  an  acknowledgment  of  their  highest  pretensions.  He 
had  been  raised  to  the  throne  by  a  Parliamentary  revolu- 
tion. His  claim  to  obedience  had  throughout  to  rest  on  a 
Parliamentary  title.  During  no  period  of  our  early  his- 
tory therefore  were  the  powers  of  the  two  Houses  so 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  525 

frankly  recognized.  The  tone  of  Henry  the  Fourth  till 
the  very  close  of  tis  reign  is  that  of  humble  compliance  in 
all  but  ecclesiastical  matters  with  the  prayers  of  the  Par- 
liament, and  even  his  imperious  successor  shrank  almost 
with  timidity  from  any  conflict  with  it.  But  the  Crown 
had  been  bought  by  pledges  less  noble  than  this.  Arundel 
was  not  only  the  representative  of  constitutional  rule;  he 
was  also  the  representative  of  religious  persecution.  No 
prelate  had  been  so  bitter  a  foe  of  the  Lollards,  and  the 
support  which  the  Church  had  given  to  the  recent  revolu- 
tion had  no  doubt  sprung  from  its  belief  that  a  sovereign 
whom  Arundel  placed  on  the  throne  would  deal  pitilessly 
with  the  growing  heresy.  The  expectations  of  the  clergy 
were  soon  realized.  In  the  first  Convocation  of  his  reign 
Henry  declared  himself  the  protector  of  the  Church  and 
ordered  the  prelates  to  take  measures  for  the  suppression 
of  heresy  and  of  the  wandering  preachers.  His  declara- 
tion was  but  a  prelude  to  the  Statute  of  Heresy  which  was 
passed  at  the  opening  of  1401.  By  the  provisions  of  this 
infamous  Act  the  hindrances  which  had  till  now  neutral- 
ized the  efforts  of  the  bishops  to  enforce  the  common  law 
were  utterly  taken  away.  Not  only  were  they  permitted 
to  arrest  all  preachers  of  heresy,  all  schoolmasters  infected 
with  heretical  teaching,  all  owners  and  writers  of  heretical 
books,  and  to  imprison  them  even  if  they  recanted  at  the 
King's  pleasure,  but  a  refusal  to  abjure  or  a  relapse  after 
abjuration  enabled  them  to  hand  over  the  heretic  to  the 
civil  officers,  and  by  these — so  ran  the  first  legal  enact- 
ment of  religious  bloodshed  which  defiled  our  Statute-book 
— he  was  to  be  burned  on  a  high  place  before  the  people. 
The  statute  was  hardly  passed  when  William  Sautre  be- 
came its  first  victim.  Sautre,  while  a  parish  priest  at 
Lynn,  had  been  cited  before  the  Bishop  of  Norwich  two 
years  before  for  heresy  and  forced  to  recant.  But  he  still 
continued  to  preach  against  the  worship  of  images,  against 
pilgrimages,  and  against  transubstantiation  till  the  Statute 
of  Heresy  strengthened  Arundel's  hands.     In  February, 


626  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

1401,  Sautre  was  brought  before  the  Primate  as  a  relapsed 
heretic,  and  on  refusing  to  recant  a  second  time  was  de- 
graded from  his  orders.  He  was  handed  to  the  secular 
power,  and  on  the  issue  of  a  royal  writ  publicly  burned. 

The  support  of  the  nobles  had  been  partly  won  by  a  hope 
hardly  less  fatal  to  the  peace  of  the  realm,  the  hope  of  a 
renewal  of  the  strife  with  France.     The  peace  of  Richard's 
later  years  had  sprung  not  merely  from  the  policy  of  the 
English  King,  but  from  the  madness  of  Charles  the  Sixth 
of  France.     France  fell  into  the  hands  of  its  king's  uncle, 
the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  and  as  the  Duke  was  ruler  of 
Flanders   and  peace  with  England  was  a  necessity  for 
Flemish  industry,  his  policy  went  hand  in  hand  with  that 
of  Richard.     His  rival,  the  King's  brother,  Lewis,  Duke 
of  Orleans,  was  the  head  of  the  French  war-party ;  and 
it  was  with  the  view  of  bringing  about  war  that  he  sup- 
ported Henry  of  Lancaster  in  his  exile  at  the  French  court. 
Burgundy  on  the  other  hand  listened  to  Richard's  denun- 
ciation of  Henry  as  a  traitor,  and  strove  to  prevent  his 
departure.     But  his  efforts  were  in  vain,  and  he  had  to 
witness  a  revolution  which  hurled  Richard  from  the  throne, 
deprived  Isabella  of  her  crown,  and  restored  to  power  the 
baronial  party  of  which  Gloucester,  the  advocate  of  war, 
had  long  been  the  head.     The  dread  of  war  was  increased 
by  a  pledge  which  Henry  was  said  to  have  given  at  his 
coronation  that  he  would  not  only  head  an  army  in  its 
march  into  France,  but  that  he  would  march  further  into 
France  than  ever  his  grandfather  had  done.     The  French 
Court  retorted  by  refusing  to  acknowledge  Henry  as  King, 
while  the  truce  concluded  with  Richard  came  at  his  death 
legally  to  an  end.     In  spite  of  this  defiance,  however.  Bur- 
gundy remained  true  to  the  interests  of  Flanders,  and 
Henry  clung  to  a  truce  which  gave  him  time  to  establish 
his  throne.     But  the  influence  of  the  baronial  party  in 
England  made  peace  hard  to  keep ;  the  Duke  of  Orleans 
urged  on  France  to  war ;  and  the  hatred  of  the  two  peoples 
broke  through  the  policy  of  the  two  governments.     Count 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  537 

Waleran  of  St.  Pol,  who  had  married  Richard's  half- 
sister,  put  out  to  sea  with  a  fleet  which  swept  the  east 
coast  and  entered  the  Channel.  Pirates  from  Brittany 
and  Navarre  soon  swarmed  in  the  narrow  seas,  and  their 
ravages  were  paid  back  by  those  of  pirates  from  the 
Cinque  Ports.  A  more  formidable  trouble  broke  out  in 
the  north.  The  enmity  of  France  roused  as  of  old  the 
enmity  of  Scotland;  the  Scotch  King  Robert  the  Third 
retused  to  acknowledge  Henry,  and  Scotch  freebooters 
cruised  along  the  northern  coast. 

Attack  from  without  woke  attack  from  within  the  realm. 
Henry  had  shown  little  taste  for  bloodshed  in  his  conduct 
of  the  revolution.  Save  those  of  the  royal  councillors 
whom  he  found  at  Bristol  no  one  had  been  put  to  death. 
Though  a  deputation  of  lords  with  Archbishop  Arundel  at 
its  head  pressed  him  to  take  Richard's  life,  he  steadily 
refused,  and  kept  him  a  prisoner  at  Pomfret.  The  judg- 
ments against  Gloucester,  Warwick,  and  Arundel  were 
reversed,  but  the  lords  who  had  appealed  the  Dake  were 
only  punished  by  the  loss  of  the  dignities  which  they  had 
received  as  their  reward.  Richard's  brother  and  nephew 
by  the  half-blood,  the  Dukes  of  Surrey  and  Exeter,  became 
again  Earls  of  Kent  and  Huntingdon.  York's  son,  the 
Duke  of  Albemarle,  sank  once  more  into  Earl  of  Rutland. 
Beaufort,  Earl  of  Somerset,  lost  his  new  Marquisate  of 
Dorset ;  Spenser  lost  his  Earldom  of  (jloucester.  But  in 
spite  of  a  stormy  scene  among  the  lords  in  Parliament 
Henry  refused  to  exact  further  punishment;  and  his  real 
temper  was  seen  in  a  statute  which  forbade  all  such  ap- 
peals and  left  treason  to  be  dealt  with  by  ordinary  process 
of  law.  But  the  times  were  too  rough  for  mercy  such  as 
this.  Clouds  no  sooner  gathered  round  the  new  King  than 
the  degraded  lords  leagued  with  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  and 
the  deposed  Bishop  of  Carlisle  to  release  Richard  and  to 
murder  Henry.  Betrayed  by  Rutland  in  the  spring  of 
1401,  and  threatened  by  the  King's  march  from  London, 
they  fled  to  Cirencester;  but  the  town  was  against  them, 


528  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [BoOK  IV. 

its  burghers  killed  Kent  and  Salisbury,  and  drove  out  the 
rest.  A  terrible  retribution  followed.  Lord  Spenser  and 
the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  were  taken  and  summaril}^  be- 
headed; thirty  more  conspirators  fell  into  the  King's 
hands  to  meet  the  same  fate.  They  drew  with  them  in 
their  doom  the  wretched  prisoner  in  whose  name  they  had 
risen.  A  great  council  held  after  the  suppression  of  the 
revolt  prayed  "that  if  Richard,  the  late  King,  be  alive, 
as  some  suppose  he  is,  it  be  ordained  that  he  be  well  and 
securely  guarded  for  the  safety  of  the  states  of  the  King 
and  kingdom ;  but  if  he  be  dead,  then  that  he  be  openly 
showed  to  the  people  that  they  may  have  knowledge 
thereof."  The  ominous  words  were  soon  followed  by  news 
of  Richard's  death  in  prison.  His  body  was  brought  to 
St.  Paul's,  Henry  himself  with  the  princes  of  the  blood 
royal  bearing  the  pall :  and  the  face  was  left  uncovered  to 
meet  rumors  that  the  prisoner  had  been  assassinated  by 
his  keeper,  Sir  Piers  Exton. 

In  June  Henry  marched  northward  to  end  the  trouble 
from  the  Scots.  With  their  usual  policy  the  Scottish 
army  under  the  Duke  of  Albany  withdrew  as  the  English 
crossed  the  border,  and  looked  coolly  on  while  Henry  in- 
vested the  castle  of  Edinburgh.  The  wants  of  his  army 
forced  him  in  fact  to  raise  the  siege;  but  even  success 
would  have  been  fruitless,  for  he  was  recalled  by  trouble 
nearer  home.  Wales  was  in  full  revolt.  The  country 
had  been  devoted  to  Richard ;  and  so  notorious  was  its  dis- 
affection to  the  new  line  that  when  Henry's  son  knelt  at 
his  father's  feet  to  receive  a  grant  of  the  Principalit}^  a 
shrewd  bystander  murmured,  "  He  must  conquer  it  if  he 
will  have  it."  The  death  of  the  fallen  King  only  added 
to  the  Welsh  disquiet,  for  in  spite  of  the  public  exhibition 
of  his  body  he  was  believed  to  be  still  alive.  Some  held 
that  he  had  escaped  to  Scotland,  and  an  impostor  who  took 
his  name  was  long  maintained  at  the  Scottish  Court.  In 
Wales  it  was  believed  that  he  was  still  a  prisoner  in  Ches- 
ter Castle.     But  the  trouble  would  have  died  away  had  it 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  529 

not  been  raised  into  revolt  by  the  energy  of  OwenGlyndwr 
or  Glendower.  Owen  was  a  descendant  of  one  of  the  last 
native  Princes,  Llewelyn-ap-Jorwerth,  and  the  lord  of 
considerable  estates  in  Merioneth.  He  had  been  squire  of 
the  body  to  Richard  the  Second,  and  had  clung  to  him  till 
he  was  seized  at  Flint.  It  was  probably  his  known  aver- 
sion from  the  revolution  which  had  deposed  his  master 
that  brought  on  him  the  hostility  of  Lord  Grey  of  Ruthin, 
the  stay  of  the  Lancastrian  cause  in  North  Wales;  and 
the  same  political  ground  may  have  existed  for  the  refusal 
of  the  Parliament  to  listen  to  his  prayer  for  redress  and 
for  the  restoration  of  the  lands  which  Grey  had  seized. 
But  the  refusal  was  embittered  by  words  of  insult;  when 
the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph  warned  them  of  Owen's  power 
the  lords  retorted  that "  they  cared  not  for  barefoot  knaves." 
They  were  soon  to  be  made  to  care.  At  the  close  of  1400 
Owen  rose  in  revolt,  burned  the  town  of  Ruthin,  and  took 
the  title  of  Prince  of  Wales. 

His  action  at  once  changed  the  disaffection  into  a  na- 
tional revolt.  His  raids  on  the  Marches  and  his  capture 
of  Radnor  marked  its  importance,  and  Henry  marched 
against  him  in  the  summer  of  1401.  But  Glyndwr's  post 
at  Corwen  defied  attack,  and  the  pressure  in  the  north 
forced  the  King  to  march  away  into  Scotland.  Henry 
Percy,  who  held  the  castles  of  North  Wales  as  Constable, 
was  left  to  suppress  the  rebellion,  but  Owen  met  Percy's 
arrival  by  the  capture  of  Conway  and  the  King  was  forced 
to  hurry  fresh  forces  under  his  son  Henry  to  the  west. 
The  boy  was  too  young  as  yet  to  show  the  military  and 
political  ability  which  was  to  find  its  first  field  in  these 
Welsh  campaigns,  and  his  presence  did  little  to  stay  the 
growth  of  revolt.  While  Owen's  lands  were  being  har- 
ried Owen  was  stirring  the  people  of  Caermarthen  into  re- 
bellion and  pressing  the  siege  of  Abergavenny;  nor  could 
the  presence  of  English  troops  save  Shropshire  from  pillage. 
Everywhere  the  Welshmen  rose  for  their  "Prince;"  the 
Bards  declared  his  victories  to  have  been  foretold  by  Mer- 
VOL.  I.— 34 


630  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

lin ;  even  the  Welsh  scholars  at  Oxford  left  the  University 
in  a  body  and  joined  his  standard.  The  castles  of  Ruthin, 
Hawarden,  and  Flint  fell  into  his  hands,  and  with  his 
capture  of  Conway  gave  him  command  of  North  Wales. 
The  arrival  of  help  from  Scotland  and  the  hope  of  help 
from  France  gave  fresh  vigor  to  Owen's  action,  and  thougk 
Percy  held  his  ground  stubbornly  on  the  coast  and  even 
recovered  Conway  he  at  last  threw  up  his  command  in 
disgust.  A  fresh  inroad  of  Henry  on  his  return  from 
Scotland  again  failed  to  bring  Owen  to  battle,  and  the 
negotiations  which  he  carried  on  during  the  following 
winter  were  a  mere  blind  to  cover  preparations  for  a  new 
attack.  So  strong  had  Glyndwr  become  in  1402  that  in 
June  he  was  able  to  face  an  English  army  in  the  open  field 
at  Brjmglas  and  to  defeat  it  with  a  loss  of  a  thousand  men. 
The  King  again  marched  to  the  border  to  revenge  this 
blow.  But  the  storms  which  met  him  as  he  entered  the 
hills,  storms  which  his  archers  ascribed  to  the  magic  pow- 
ers of  Owen,  ruined  his  army,  and  he  was  forced  to  with' 
draw  as  of  old.  A  raid  over  the  northern  border  distracted 
the  English  forces.  A  Scottish  army  entered  England 
with  the  impostor  who  bore  Richard's  name,  and  though 
it  was  utterly  defeated  b}^  Henry  Percy  in  September  at 
Homildon  Hill  the  respite  had  served  Owen  well.  He  sal- 
lied out  from  the  inaccessible  fastnesses  in  which  he  had 
held  Henry  at  bay  to  win  victories  which  were  followed 
by  the  adhesion  of  all  North  Wales  and  of  great  part  of 
South  Wales  to  his  cause. 

What  gave  life  to  these  attacks  and  conspiracies  was 
the  hostility  of  France.  The  influence  of  the  Duke  of 
Burgundy  was  still  strong  enough  to  prevent  any  formal 
hostilities,  but  the  war  party  was  gaining  more  and  more 
the  ascendant.  Its  head,  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  had  fanned 
the  growing  flame  by  sending  a  formal  defiance  to  Henry 
the  Fourth  as  the  murderer  of  Richard.  French  knights 
were  among  the  prisoners  whom  the  Percies  took  at  Homil- 
don Hill  J  and  it  may  have  been  through  their  intervention 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  531 


that  th^Percies  themselves  were  now  brought  into  corre- 
spondence with  the  court  of  France.  No  house  had  played 
a  greater  part  in  the  overthrow  of  Richard,  or  had  been 
more  richly  rewarded  by  the  new  King.  But  old  grudges 
existed  between  the  house  of  Percy  and  the  house  of  Lan- 
caster. "  The  Earl  of  Northumberland  had  been  at  bitter 
variance  with  John  of  Gaunt ;  and  though  a  common  dread 
of  Richard's  enmity  had  thrown  the  Percies  and  Henry 
together  the  new  King  and  his  powerful  subjects  were  soon 
parted  again.  Henry  had  ground  indeed  for  distrust. 
The  death  of  Richard  left  the  young  Mortimer,  Earl  of 
March,  next  claimant  in  blood  of  the  crown,  and  the  King 
had  shown  his  sense  of  this  danger  by  imprisoning  the 
earl  and  his  sisters  in  the  Tower.  But  this  imprisonment 
made  their  uncle.  Sir  Edmund  Mortimer,  the  representa- 
tive of  their  house ;  and  Edfnund  withdrew  to  the  Welsh 
Marches,  refusing  to  own  Henry  for  king.  The  danger 
was  averted  by  the  luck  which  threw  Sir  Edmund  as  a 
captive  into  the  hands  of  Owen  Glyndwr  in  the  battle  of 
Brynglas.  It  was  natural  that  Henry  should  refuse  to 
allow  Mortimer's  kinsmen  to  ransom  so  formidable  an 
enemy;  but  among  these  kinsmen  Henry  Percy  ranked 
himself  through  his  marriage  with  Sir  Edmund's  sister, 
and  the  refusal  served  as  a  pretext  for  a  final  breach  with 
the  King. 

Percy  had  withdrawn  from  the  Welsh  war  in  wrath  at 
the  inadequate  support  which  Henry  gave  him ;  and  his 
anger  had  been  increased  by  a  delay  in  repayment  of  the 
sums  spent  by  his  house  in  the  contest  with  Scotland,  as 
well  as  by  the  King's  demand  that  he  should  surrender 
the  Earl  of  Douglas  whom  he  had  taken  prisoner  at  Hom- 
ildon  Hill.  He  now  became  the  centre  of  a  great  conspir- 
acy to  place  the  Earl  of  March  upon  the  throne.  His 
father,  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  his  uncle,  Thomas 
Percy,  the  Earl  of  Worcester,  joined  in  the  plot.  Sir  Ed- 
mund Mortimer  negotiated  for  aid  from  Owen  Glyndwr; 
the  Earl  of  Douglas  threw  in  his  fortunes  with  the  confed- 


533  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

erates;  and  Henry  Percy  himself  crossed  to  France  and 
obtained  promises  of  support.  The  war  party  had  now 
gained  the  upper  hand  at  the  French  court;  in  1403 prepa- 
rations were  made  to  attack  Calais,  and  a  Breton  fleet  put 
to  sea.  At  the  news  of  its  presence  in  the  Channel  Henry 
Percy  and  the  Earl  of  Worcester  at  once  rose  in  the  north 
and  struck  across  England  to  join  Owen  Glyndwr  in  Wales, 
while  the  Earl  of  Northumberland  gathered  a  second  army 
and  advanced  more  slowly  to  their  support.  But  Glyndwr 
was  still  busy  with  the  siege  of  Caermarthen,  and  the  King 
by  a  hasty  march  flung  himself  across  the  road  of  the  Per- 
cies  as  they  reached  Shrewsbury.  On  the  twenty-third 
of  July  a  fierce  fight  ended  in  the  defeat  of  the  rebel  force. 
Henry  Percy  was  'slain  in  battle,  the  Earl  of  Worcester 
taken  and  beheaded ;  while  Northumberland,  who  had  been 
delayed  by  an  army  under  bis  rival  in  the  north,  Neville, 
Earl  of  Westmoreland,  was  thrown  into  prison,  and  only 
pardoned  on  his  protestations  of  innocence.  The  quick, 
hard  blow  did  its  work.  The  young  Earl  of  March  be- 
trayed the  plans  of  his  partisans  to  purchase  pardon.  The 
Breton  fleet,  which  had  defeated  an  English  fleet  in  the 
Channel  and  made  a  descent  upon  Plymouth,  withdrew  to 
its  harbors ;  and  though  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  was  on  the 
point  of  commencing  the  siege  of  Calais  the  plans  of  an 
attack  on  that  town  were  no  more  heard  of. 

But  the  difficulty  of  Wales  remained  as  great  as  ever. 
The  discouragement  of  Owen  at  the  failure  of  the  conspir- 
acy of  the  Percies  was  removed  by  the  open  aid  of  the 
French  Court.  In  July,  1404,  the  French  King  in  a  formal 
treaty  owned  Glyndwr  as  Prince  of  Wales,  and  his  prom- 
ises of  aid  gave  fresh  heart  to  the  insurgents.  What  ham- 
pered Henry's  efforts  most  in  meeting  this  danger  was  the 
want  of  money.  At  the  opening  of  1404  the  Parliament 
grudgingly  gave  a  subsidy  of  a  twentieth,  but  the  treas- 
ury called  for  fresh  supplies  in  October,  and  the  wearied 
Commons  fell  back  on  their  old  proposal  of  a  confiscation 
of  Church  property.     Under  the  influence  of  Archbishop 


Chap.  5.  ]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  533 

_  . 

Arundel  the  Lords  succeeded  in  quashing  the  project,  and 
a  new  subsidy  was  voted ;  but  the  treasury  was  soon  as 
empty  as  before.  Treason  was  still  rife;  the  Duke  of 
York,  who  had  played  so  conspicuous  a  part  in  Richard's 
day  as  Earl  of  Rutland,  was  sent  for  a  while  to  the  Tower 
on  suspicion  of  complicity  in  an  attempt  of  his  sister  to 
release  the  Earl  of  March ;  and  Glyndwr  remained  uncon- 
querable. 

But  fortune  was  now  beginning  to  turn.  The  danger 
from  Scotland  was  suddenly  removed.  King  Robert  re- 
solved to  send  his  son  James  for  training  to  the  court  of 
France,  but  the  boy  was  driven  to  the  English  coast  by  a 
storm  and  Henry  refused  to  release  him.  Had  the  Scots 
been  friends,  the  King  jested,  they  would  have  sent  James 
to  him  for  education,  as  he  knew  the  French  tongue  quite 
as  well  as  King  Charles.  Robert  died  of  grief  at  the  news ; 
and  Scotland  fell  into  the  hands  of  his  brother,  the  Duke 
of  Albany,  whose  one  aim  was  that  his  nephew  should  re- 
main a  prisoner.  James  grew  up  at  the  English  Court ; 
and  prisoner  though  he  was,  the  excellence  of  his  training 
was  seen  in  the  poetry  and  intelligence  of  his  later  life. 
But  with  its  King  as  a  hostage  Scotland  was  no  longer  to 
be  dreaded  as  a  foe.  France  too  was  weakened  at  this 
moment;  for  in  1405  the  long  smouldering  jealousy  be- 
tween the  Dukes  of  Orleans  and  of  Burgundy  broke  out  at 
last  into  open  strife.  The  break  did  little  indeed  to  check 
the  desultory  hostilities  which  were  going  on.  A  Breton 
fleet  made  descents  on  Portland  and  Dartmouth.  The 
Count  of  Armagnac,  the  strongest  supporter  of  Orleans  and 
the  war  part}^,  led  troops  against  the  frontier  of  Guienne, 
But  the  weakness  of  France  and  the  exhaustion  of  its  treas- 
ury prevented  any  formal  denunciation  of  the  truce  or  dec- 
laration of  war.  Though  Henry  could  spare  not  a  soldier 
for  Guienne  Armagnac  did  little  hurt.  An  English  fleet 
repaid  the  ravages  of  the  Bretons  by  harrying  the  coast  of 
Brittany;  and  the  turn  of  French  politics  soon  gave 
Frenchmen  too  much  work  at  home  to  spare  men  for  work 


634  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

abroad.  At  the  close  of  1407  the  murder  of  the  Duke  of 
Orleans  by  the  order  of  the  Duke  of  Burgvmdy  changed 
the  weak  and  fitful  strife  which  had  been  going  on  into  a 
struggle  of  the  bitterest  hate.  The  Count  of  Armagnac 
placed  himself  at  the  head  of  the  murdered  duke's  parti- 
sans ;  and  in  their  furious  antagonism  Armagnac  and  Bur- 
gundian  alike  sought  aid  from  the  English  King. 

But  the  fortune  which  favored  Henry  elsewhere  was 
still  slow  to  turn  in  the  West.  In  the  opening  of  1405  the 
King's  son,  Henry  Prince  of  Wales,  had  taken  the  field 
against  Glyndwr.  Young  as  he  was,  Henry  was  already 
a  tried  soldier.  As  a  boy  of  thirteen  he  had  headed  an 
incursion  into  Scotland  in  the  year  of  his  father's  accession 
to  the  throne.  At  fifteen  he  fought  in  the  front  of  the 
royal  army  in  the  desperate  fight  at  Shrewsbury.  Slight 
and  tall  in  stature  as  he  seemed,  he  had  outgrown  the 
weakness  of  his  earlier  years  and  was  vigorous  and  swift 
of  foot ;  his  manners  were  courteous,  his  air  grave  and  re- 
served ;  and  though  wild  tales  ran  of  revels  and  riots  among 
his  friends,  the  poets  whom  he  favored  and  Lydgate  whom 
he  set  to  translate  "  the  drery  piteous  tale  of  him  of  Troy" 
saw  in  him  a  youth  "  both  manful  and  virtuous."  There 
was  little  time  indeed  for  mere  riot  in  a  life  so  busy  as 
Henry's,  nor  were  many  opportunities  for  self-indulgence 
to  be  found  in  campaigns  against  Glyndwr.  What  fitted 
the  young  general  of  seventeen  for  the  thankless  work  in 
Wales  was  his  stern,  immovable  will.  But  fortune  as 
yet  had  few  smiles  for  the  King  in  this  quarter,  and  his 
constant  ill-success  continued  to  wake  fresh  troubles  within 
England  itself.  The  repulse  of  the  young  prince  in  a 
spring  campaign  in  1405  was  at  once  followed  by  a  re- 
volt in  the  north.  The  pardon  of  Northumberland  had 
left  him  still  a  foe;  the  Earl  of  Nottingham  was  son  of 
Henry's  opponent,  the  banished  Duke  of  Norfolk;  Scrope, 
Archbishop  of  York,  was  brother  of  Richard's  counsellor, 
the  Earl  of  W  iltshire,  who  had  been  beheaded  on  the  sur- 
render of  Bristol.     Their  rising  in  May  might  have  proved 


CHAP.  5.]  THE  PARLIAIklENT.     1307—1461.  535 

a  serious  danger  had  not  the  treachery  of  Ralph  Neville, 
the  Earl  of  Westmoreland,  who  still  remained  steady  to 
the  Lancastrian  cause,  secured  the  arrest  of  some  of  its 
leaders.  Scrope  and  Lord  Nottingham  were  beheaded, 
while  Northumberland  and  his  partisan  Lord  Bardolf  fled 
into  Scotland  and  from  thence  to  Wales.  Succors  from 
France  stirred  the  King  to  a  renewed  attack  on  Glyndwr 
in  November ;  but  with  the  same  ill-success.  Storms  and 
w^ant  of  food  wrecked  the  English  army  and  forced  it  to 
retreat;  a  year  of  rest  raised  Glyndwr  to  new  strength; 
and  when  the  long  promised  body  of  eight  thousand  French- 
men joined  him  in  1407  he  ventured  even  to  cross  the  bor- 
der and  to  threaten  Worcester.  The  threat  was  a  vain 
one  and  the  Welsh  army  soon  withdrew ;  but  the  insult 
gave  fresh  heart  to'  Henry's  foes,  and  in  1408  Northum- 
berland and  Bardolf  again  appeared  in  the  north.  Their 
overthrow  at  Bramham  Moor  put  an  end  to  the  danger 
from  the  Percies;  for  Northumberland  and  Bardolf  alike 
fell  on  the  field.  But  Wales  remained  as  defiant  as  ever. 
In  1409  a  body  of  Welshmen  poured  ravaging  into  Shrop- 
shire ;  many  of  the  English  towns  had  fallen  into  Glyn- 
dwr's  hands ;  and  some  of  the  marcher-lords  made  private 
truces  with  him. 

The  weakness  which  was  produced  by  this  ill-success  in 
the  West  as  well  as  these  constant  battlings  with  disaffec- 
tion within  the  realm  was  seen  in  the  attitude  of  the  Lol- 
lards. Lollardry  was  far  from  having  been  crushed  by 
the  Statute  of  Heresy.  The  death  of  the  Earl  of  Salisbury 
in  the  first  of  the  revolts  against  Henry's  throne,  though 
his  gory  head  was  welcomed  into  London  by  a  procession 
of  abbots  and  bishops  who  went  out  singing  psalms  of 
thanksgiving  to  meet  it,  only  transferred  the  leadership  of 
the  party  to  one  of  the  foremost  warriors  of  the  time,  Sir 
John  Oldcastle.  If  we  believe  his  opponents,  and  we  have 
no  information  about  him  save  from  hostile  sources,  he 
was  of  lowly  origin,  and  his  rise  must  have  been  due  to 
his  own  capacity  and  services  to  the  Crown.     In  his  youth 


536  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE.      [BOOK  IV. 

he  had  listened  to  the  preaching  of  Wj^clif,  and  his  Lol- 
lardry — if  we  may  judge  from  its  tone  in  later  years — was 
a  violent  fanaticism.  But  this  formed  no  obstacle  to  his 
rise  in  Richard's  reign;  his  marriage  with  the  heiress  of 
that  house  made  him  Lord  Cobham ;  and  the  accession  of 
Henry  of  Lancaster,  to  whose  cause  he  seems  to  have  clung 
in  these  younger  days,  brought  him  fairly  to  the  front. 
His  skill  in  arms  found  recognition  in  his  appointment  as 
sheriff  of  Herefordshire  and  as  castellan  of  Brecknock ;  and 
he  was  among  the  leaders  who  were  chosen  in  later  years 
for  service  in  France.  His  warlike  renown  endeared  him 
to  the  King,  and  Prince  Henry  counted  him  among  the 
most  illustrious  of  his  servants.  The  favor  of  the  royal 
house  was  the  more  notable  that  Oldcastle  was  known  as 
"  leader  and  captain"  of  the  Lollards.  His  Kentish  castle 
of  Cowling  served  as  the  headquarters  of  the  sect,  and 
their  preachers  were  openly  entertained  at  his  houses  in 
London  or  on  the  Welsh  border.  The  Convocation  of  1413 
charged  him  with  being  "  the  principal  receiver,  favorer, 
protector,  and  defender  of  them;  and  that,  especially  in 
the  dioceses  of  London,  Rochester,  and  Hereford,  he  hath 
sent  out  the  said  Lollards  to  preach  .  .  .  and  hath  been 
present  at  their  wicked  sermons,  grievously  punishing  with 
threatenings,  terror,  and  the  power  of  the  secular  sword 
such  as  did  withstand  them,  alleging  and  affirming  among 
other  matters  that  we,  the  bishops,  had  no  power  to  make 
any  such  Constitutions"  as  the  Provincial  Constitutions  in 
which  they  had  forbidden  the  preaching  of  unlicensed 
preachers.  The  bold  stand  of  Lord  Cobham  drew  fresh 
influence  from  the  sanctity  of  his  life.  Though  the  clergy 
charged  him  with  the  foulest  heresy,  they  owned  that  he 
shrouded  it  "under  a  veil  of  holiness."  What  chiefly 
moved  their  wrath  was  that  he  "  armed  the  hands  of  lay- 
men for  the  spoil  of  the  Church."  The  phrase  seems  to 
hint  that  Oldcastle  was  the  mover  in  the  repeated  attempts 
of  the  Commons  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  state  by  a  con- 
fiscation of  Church  property.     In  1404  they  prayed  that 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  537 

the  needs  of  the  kingdom  might  be  defrayed  by  a  confisca- 
tion of  Church  lands,  aud  though  this  prayer  was  fiercely 
met  by  Archbishop  Arundel  it  was  renewed  in  1410.  The 
Commons  declared  as  before  that  bj^  devoting  the  revenues 
of  the  prelates  to  the  service  of  the  state  maintenance  could 
be  made  for  fifteen  earls,  fifteen  hundred  knights,  and  six 
thousand  squires,  while  a  hundred  hospitals  might  be  es- 
tablished for  the  sick  and  infirm.  Such  proposals  had  been 
commonly  made  by  the  baronial  party  with  which  the 
house  of  Lancaster  had  in  former  days  been  connected, 
and  hostile  as  they  were  to  the  Church  as  an  establishment 
they  had  no  necessary  connection  with  any  hostility  to  its 
doctrines.  But  a  direct  sympathy  with  Lollardism  was 
seen  in  the  further  proposals  of  the  Commons.  They 
prayed  for  the  abolition  of  episcopal  jurisdiction  over  the 
clergy  and  for  a  mitigation  of  the  Statute  of  Heresy. 

But  formidable  as  the  movement  seemed  it  found  a  for- 
midable opponent.  The  steady  fighting  of  Prince  Henry 
had  at  last  met  the  danger  from  Wales,  and  Glyndwr, 
though  still  unconquered,  saw  district  after  district  sub- 
mit again  to  English  rule.  From  Wales  the  Prince  re- 
turned to  bring  his  will  to  bear  on  England  itself.  It  was 
through  his  strenuous  opposition  that  the  proposals  of  the 
Commons  in  1410  were  rejected  by  the  Lords.  He  gave 
at  the  same  moment  a  more  terrible  proof  of  his  loyalty  to 
the  Church  in  personally  assisting  at  the  burning  of  a 
laj'man,  Thomas  Badby,  for  a  denial  of  transubstantiation. 
The  prayers  of  the  sufferer  were  taken  for  a  recantation, 
and  the  Prince  ordered  the  fire  to  be  plucked  away.  But 
when  the  offer  of  life  and  a  pension  failed  to  break  the 
spirit  of  the  Lollard  Henry  pitilessly  bade  him  be  hurled 
back  to  his  doom.  The  Prince  was  now  the  virtual  ruler 
of  the  realm.  His  father's  earlier  popularity  had  disap- 
peared amid  the  troubles  and  heavy  taxation  of  his  reign. 
He  was  already  a  victim  to  the  attack  of  epilepsy  which 
brought  him  to  the  grave;  and  in  the  opening  of  1410  the 
Parliament  called  for  the  appointment  of  a  Continual  Coun- 


538  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


cil.     The  Council  was  appointed,  and  the  Prince  placed  at 
its  head.     His  energy  was  soon  seen  in  a  more  active  in- 
terposition in  the  affairs  of  France.     So  bitter  had  the 
hatred   grown   between   the  Burgundian  and  Armagnac 
parties  that  both  in  turn  appealed  again  to  England  for 
lielp.      Tlie   Burgundian  alliance  found   favor  with  the 
Council.     In  August,  1411,  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  offered 
his  daughter  in  marriage  to  the  Prince  as  the  price  of 
English  aid,  and  four  thousand  men  with  Lord  Cobham 
among  their  leaders  were  sent  to  join  his  forces  at  Paris, 
Their  help  enabled  Duke  John  to  bring  his  opponents  to 
battle  at  St.  Cloud,  and  to  win  a  decisive  victor}^  in  No- 
vember.    But  already  the  King  was  showing  himself  im- 
patient of  the  Council's  control ;  and  the  Parliament  sig- 
nificantly prayed  that  "  as  there  had  been  a  great  murmur 
among  your  people  that  you  have  had  in  your  heart  a  heavy 
load  against  some  of  your  lieges  come  to  this  present  Par- 
liament," they  might  be  formally  declared  to  be  "faithful 
lieges  and  servants."     The  prayer  was  granted,   but  in 
spite  of  the  support  which  the  Houses  gave  to  the  Prince, 
Henry  the  Fourth  was  resolute  to  assert  his  power.     At 
the  close  of  1411  he  declared  his  will  to  stand  in  as  great 
freedom,  prerogative,  and  franchise  as  an}'^  of  his  prede- 
cessors had  done,  and  annulled  on  that  ground  the  appoint- 
ment of  the  Continual  Council. 

The  King's  blow  had  been  dealt  at  the  instigation  of  his 
Queen,  and  it  seems  to  have  been  prompted  as  much  by  a 
resolve  to  change  the  outer  policy  which  the  Prince  had 
adopted  as  to  free  himself  from  the  Council.  The  dismissal 
of  the  English  troops  by  John  of  Burgundy  after  his  victory 
at  St.  Cloud  had  irritated  the  English  Court ;  and  the  Duke 
of  Orleans  took  advantage  of  this  turn  of  feeling  to  offer 
Catharine,  the  French  King's  daughter,  in  marriage  to 
the  Prince,  and  to  promise  the  restoration  of  all  that  Eng- 
land claimed  in  Guienne  and  Poitou.  In  spite  of  the  efforts 
of  the  Prince  and  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  a  treaty  of  alli- 
ance with  Orleans  was  signed  on  these  terms  in  May,  1412, 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  539 

•% . 

and  a  force  under  the  King's  second  son,  the  Duke  of  Clar- 
ence, disembarked  at  La  Hogue.  But  the  very  profusion 
of  the  Orleanist  offers  threw  doubt  on  their  sincerity.  The 
Duke  was  only  using  the  English  aid  to  put  a  pressure  on 
his  antagonist,  and  its  landing  in  August  at  once  brought 
John  of  burgundy  to  a  seeming  submission.  While  Clar- 
ence penetrated  by  Normandy  and  Maine  into  the  Orlean 
nois  and  a  second  English  force  sailed  for  Calais,  both  the 
French  parties  joined  in  pledging  their  services  to  King 
Charles  "against  his  adversary  of  England."  Before  this 
union  Clarence  was  forced  in  November  to  accept  promise 
of  payment  for  his  men  from  the  Duke  of  Orleans  and  to 
fall  back  on  Bordeaux.  The  failure  no  doubt  gave  fresh 
strength  to  Prince  Henry.  In  the  opening  of  1412  he  had 
been  discharged  from  the  Council  and  Clarence  set  in  his 
place  at  its  head ;  he  had  been  defeated  in  his  attempts  to 
renew  the  Burgundian  alliance,  and  had  striven  in  vain 
to  hinder  Clarence  from  sailing.  The  break  grew  into  an 
open  quarrel.  Letters  were  sent  into  various  counties  re- 
futing the  charges  of  the  Prince's  detractors,  and  in  Sep- 
tember Henry  himself  appeared  before  his  father  with  a 
crowd  of  his  friends  and  supporters  demanding  the  punish- 
ment of  those  who  accused  him.  The  charges  made  against 
him  were  that  he  sought  to  bring  about  the  King's  re- 
moval from  the  throne ;  and  "  the  great  recourse  of  people 
unto  him,  of  which  his  court  was  at  all  times  more  abundant 
than  his  father's,"  gave  color  to  the  accusation.  Henry 
the  Fourth  owned  his  belief  in  these  charges,  but  promised 
to  call  a  Parliament  for  his  son's  vindication;  and  the 
Parliament  met  in  the  Februarj  of  1413.  But  a  new  at- 
tack of  epilepsy  had  weakened  the  King's  strength ;  and 
though  galleys  were  gathered  for  a  Crusade  which  he  had 
vowed  he  was  too  weak  to  meet  the  Houses  on  their  as- 
sembly. If  we  may  trust  a  charge  which  was  afterward 
denied,  the  King's  half-brother,  Bishop  Henry  of  Win- 
chester, one  of  the  Beaufort  children  of  John  of  Gaunt, 
acting  in  secret  co-operation  with  the  Prince,  now  brought 


540  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV, 

the  peers  to  pray  Henry  to  suffer  his  son  to  be  crowned  in 
his  stead.  The  King's  refusal  was  the  last  act  of  a  dying 
man.  Before  the  end  of  March  he  breathed  his  last  in  the 
"  Jerusalem  Chamber"  within  the  Abbot's  house  at  West- 
minster ;  and  the  Prince  obtained  the  crown  which  he  had 
sought. 

The  removal  of  Archbishop  Arundel  from  the  Chancel- 
lorship, which  was  given  to  Henry  Beaufort  of  Winches- 
ter, was  among  the  first  acts  of  Henry  the  Fifth ;  and  it  is 
probable  that  this  blow  at  the  great  foe  of  the  Lollards  gave 
encouragement  to  the  hopes  of  Oldcastle.  He  seized  the 
opportunity  of  the  coronation  in  April  to  press  his  opinions 
on  the  young  King,  though  probably  rather  with  a  view 
to  the  plunder  of  the  Church  than  to  any  directly  religious 
end.  From  the  words  of  the  clerical  chroniclers  it  is  plain 
that  Henry  had  no  mind  as  yet  for  any  open  strife  with 
either  party,  and  that  he  quietly  put  the  matter  aside.  He 
was  in  fact  busy  with  foreign  affairs.  The  Duke  of  Clar- 
ence was  recalled  from  Bordeaux,  and  a  new  truce  con- 
cluded with  France.  The  policy  of  Henry  was  clearly  to 
look  on  for  a  while  at  the  shifting  politics  of  the  distracted 
kingdom.  Soon  after  his  accession  another  revolution  in 
Paris  gave  the  charge  of  the  mad  King  Charles,  and  with 
it  the  nominal  government  of  the  realm,  to  the  Duke  of 
Orleans;  and  his  cause  derived  fresh  strength  from  the 
support  of  the  young  Dauphin,  who  was  afterward  to  play 
so  great  a  part  in  the  history  of  France  as  Charles  the 
Seventh.  John  of  Burgundy  withdrew  to  Flanders,  and 
both  parties  again  sought  Henry's  aid.  But  his  hands 
were  tied  as  yet  by  trouble  at  home.  Oldcastle  was  far 
from  having  abandoned  his  projects,  discouraged  as  they 
had  been  by  his  master;  while  the  suspicions  of  Henry's 
favor  to  the  Lollard  cause  which  could  hardly  fail  to  be 
roused  by  his  favor  to  the  Lollard  leader  only  spurred  the 
bold  spirit  of  Arundel  to  energetic  action.  A  council  of 
bishops  gathered  in  the  summer  to  denounce  Lollardry  and 
at  once  called  on  Henry  to  suffer  Oldcastle  to  be  brought 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  541 

« . . 

to  justice.  The  King  pleaded  for  delay  in  the  case  of  one 
who  was  so  close  a  friend,  and  strove  personally  to  con- 
vince Lord  Cobham  of  his  errors.  All  however  was  in 
vain,  and  Oldcastle  withdrew  to  his  castle  of  Cowling, 
while  Arundel  summoned  him  before  his  court  and  con- 
victed hiin  as  a  heretic.  His  open  defiance  at  last  forced 
the  King  to  act.  In  September  a  body  of  royal  troops  ar- 
rested Lord  Cobham  and  carried  him  to  the  Tower;  but 
his  life  was  still  spared,  and  after  a  month's  confinement 
his  imprisonment  was  relaxed  on  his  promise  of  recanta- 
tion. Cobham  however  had  now  resolved  on  open  resist- 
ance. He  broke  from  the  Tower  in  November,  and  from 
his  hiding-place  organized  a  vast  revolt.  At  the  opening 
of  1414  a  secret  order  summoned  the  Lollards  to  assemble 
in  St.  Giles'  Fields,  outside  London.  We  gather,  if  not 
the  real  aims  of  the  rising,  at  least  the  terror  it  caused, 
from  Henry's  statement  that  its  purpose  was  "  to  destroy 
himself,  his  brothers,  and  several  of  the  spiritual  and  tem- 
poral lords ;"  from  Cobham's  later  declarations  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  pretext  of  the  rising  was  to  release  Richard, 
whom  he  asserted  to  be  still  alive,  and  to  set  him  again  on 
the  throne.  But  the  vigilance  of  the  young  King  pre- 
vented the  junction  of  the  Lollards  within  the  city  with 
their  confederates  without,  and  these  as  they  appeared  at 
the  place  of  meeting  were  dispersed  by  the  royal  troops. 

The  failure  of  the  rising  onl}^  increased  the  rigor  of  the 
law.  Magistrates  were  directed  to  arrest  all  heretics  and 
hand  them  over  to  the  bishops;  a  conviction  of  heresy  was 
made  to  entail  forfeiture  of  blood  and  estate;  and  the  exe- 
cution of  thirty-nine  prominent  Lollards  as  traitors  gave 
terrible  earnest  of  the  King's  resolve  to  suppress  their  sect. 
Oldcastle  escaped,  and  for  four  years  longer  strove  to  rouse 
revolt  after  revolt.  He  was  at  last  captured  on  the  Welsh 
border  and  burned  as  a  heretic;  but  from  the  moment 
when  his  attempt  at  revolt  was  crushed  in  St.  Giles' 
Fields  the  dread  of  Lollardry  was  broken  and  Henry  was 
free  to  take  a  more  energetic  course  of  policy  on  the  other 


643  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

side  the  sea.  He  had  already  been  silently  preparing  for 
action  by  conciliatory  measures,  by  restoring  Henry  Percy's 
son  to  the  Earldom  of  Northumberland,  by  the  release  of 
the  Earl  of  March,  and  by  the  solemn  burial  of  Richard 
the  Second  at  Westminster.  The  suppression  of  the  Lol- 
lard revolt  was  followed  by  a  demand  for  the  restoration 
of  the  English  possessions  in  France,  and  by  alliances  and 
preparations  for  war.  Burgundy  stood  aloof  in  a  sullen 
neutrality,  and  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  who  was  now  vir- 
tually ruler  of  the  French  kingdom,  in  vain  proposed  con- 
cession after  concession.  All  negotiation  indeed  broke 
down  when  Henry  formally  put  forward  his  claim  on  the 
crown  of  France.  No  claim  could  have  been  more  utterly 
baseless,  for  the  Parliamentary  title  by  which  the  House 
of  Lancaster  held  England  could  give  it  no  right  over 
France,  and  the  strict  law  of  hereditary  succession  which 
Edward  asserted  could  be  pleaded,  if  pleaded  at  all,  only 
by  the  House  of  Mortimer.  Not  only  the  claim  in- 
deed, but  the  very  nature  of  the  war  itself  was  wholly 
different  from  that  of  Edward  the  Third.  Edward  had 
been  forced  into  the  struggle  against  his  will  by  the  cease- 
less attacks  of  France,  and  his  claim  of  the  crown  was 
little  but  an  afterthought  to  secure  the  alliance  of  Flan- 
ders. The  war  of  Henry  on  the  other  hand,  though  in 
form  a  mere  renewal  of  the  earlier  struggle  on  the  close 
of  the  truce  made  by  Richard  the  Second,  was  in  fact  an 
aggression  on  the  part  of  a  nation  tempted  by  the  helpless- 
ness of  its  opponent  and  galled  by  the  memory  of  former 
defeat.  Its  one  excuse  lay  in  the  attacks  which  France 
for  the  past  fifteen  years  had  directed  against  the  Lan- 
castrian throne,  its  encouragement  of  every  enemy  without 
and  of  every  traitor  within.  Henry  may  fairly  have  re- 
garded such  a  ceaseless  hostility,  continued  even  through 
j^ears  of  weakness,  as  forcing  him  in  sheer  self-defence  to 
secure  his  realm  against  the  weightier  attack  which  might 
be  looked  for  should  France  recover  her  strength. 

in  the  summer  of  1415  the  King  prepared  to  sail  from 


CHAf>.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  543 


Southampton,  when  a  plot  reminded  him  of  the  insecurity 
of  his  throne.  The  Earl  of  March  was  faithful :  but  he 
was  childless,  and  his  claim  would  pass  at  his  death 
through  a  sister  who  had  wedded  the  Earl  of  Cambridge, 
a  son  of  the  Duke  of  York,  to  her  child  Richard,  the  Duke 
who  was  to  play  so  great  a  part  in  the  War  of  the  Roses. 
It  was  to  secure  his  boy's  claims  that  the  Earl  of  Cam- 
bridge seized  on  the  King's  departure  to  conspire  with 
Lord  Scrope  and  Sir  Thomas  Grey  to  proclaim  the  Earl  of 
March  King.  The  plot,  however,  was  discovered  and  the 
plotters  beheaded  before  the  King  sailed  in  August  for  the 
Norman  coast.  His  first  exploit  was  the  capture  of  Har- 
fleur.  Dysentery  made  havoc  in  his  ranks  during  the 
siege,  and  it  was  with  a  mere  handful  of  men  that  he  re- 
solved to  insult  the  enemy  by  a  daring  march  like  that  of 
Edward  upon  Calais.  The  discord,  however,  on  which  he 
probably  reckoned  for  security  vanished  before  the  actual 
appearance  of  the  invaders  in  the  heart  of  France;  and 
when  his  weary  and  half-starved  force  succeeded  in  cross- 
ing the  Somme  it  found  sixty  thousand  Frenchmen  en- 
camped on  the  field  of  Agincourt  right  across  its  line  of 
march.  Their  position,  flanked  on  either  side  by  woods, 
but  with  a  front  so  narrow  that  the  dense  masses  were 
drawn  up  thirty  men  deep,  though  strong  for  purposes  of 
defence  was  ill  suited  for  attack ;  and  the  French  leaders, 
warned  by  the  experience  of  Cregy  and  Poitiers,  resolved 
to  await  the  English  advance.  Henry  on  the  other  hand 
had  no  choice  between  attack  and  unconditional  surrender. 
His  troops  were  starving,  and  the  way  to  Calais  la}'-  across 
the  French  army.  But  the  King's  courage  rose  with  the 
peril.  A  knight  in  his  train  wished  that  the  thousands  of 
stout  warriors  lying  idle  that  night  in  England  had  been 
standing  in  his  ranks.  Henry  answered  with  a  burst  of 
scorn.  "  I  would  not  have  a  single  man  more,"  he  replied. 
"  If  God  give  us  the  victory,  it  will  be  plain  we  owe  it  to 
His  grace.  If  not,  the  fewer  we  are,  the  less  loss  for  Eng- 
land."    Starving  and  sick  as  they  were,  the  handful  of 


544  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

men  whom  he  led  shared  the  spirit  of  their  king.  As  the 
chill  rainy  night  passed  away  he  drew  up  his  army  on  the 
twenty-fifth  of  October  and  boldlj^  gave  battle.  The  Eng- 
lish archers  bared  their  arms  and  breasts  to  give  fair  play 
to  "the  crooked  stick  and  the  gray  goose  wing,"  but  for 
which — as  the  rhyme  ran — "  England  were  but  a  fling,"  and 
with  a  great  shout  sprang  forward  to  the  attack.  The 
sight  of  their  advance  roused  the  fiery  pride  of  the  French ; 
the  wise  resolve  of  their  leaders  was  forgotten,  and  the 
dense  mass  of  men-at-arms  plunged  heavily  forward 
through  miry  ground  on  the  English  front.  But  at  the 
first  sign  of  movement  Henry  had  halted  his  line,  and  fix- 
ing in  the  ground  the  sharpened  stakes  with  which  each 
man  was  furnished  his  archers  poured  their  fatal  arrow 
flights  into  the  hostile  ranks.  The  carnage  was  terrible, 
for  though  the  desperate  charges  of  the  French  knighthood 
at  last  drove  the  English  archers  to  the  neighboring  woods, 
from  the  skirt  of  these  woods  they  were  still  able  to  pour 
their  shot  into  the  enemy's  flanks,  while  Henry  with  the 
men-at-arms  around  him  flung  himself  on  the  French  line. 
In  the  terrible  struggle  which  followed  the  King  bore  off 
the  palm  of  bravery :  he  was  felled  once  by  a  blow  from  a 
French  mace  and  the  crown  of  his  helmet  was  cleft  by  the 
sword  of  the  Duke  of  Alengon ;  but  the  enemy  was  at  last 
broken,  and  the  defeat  of  the  main  body  of  the  French 
was  followed  by  the  rout  of  their  reserve.  The  triumph 
was  more  complete,  as  the  odds  were  even  greater,  than 
at  Cregy.  Eleven  thousand  Frenchmen  lay  dead  on  the 
field,  and  more  than  a  hundred  princes  and  great  lords 
were  among  the  fallen. 

The  immediate  result  of  the  battle  of  Agincourt  was 
small,  for  the  English  army  was  too  exhausted  for  pursuit, 
and  it  made  its  way  to  Calais  only  to  return  to  England. 
Through  1416  the  war  was  limited  to  a  contest  for  the 
command  of  the  Channel,  till  the  increasing  bitterness  of  the 
strife  between  the  Burgundians  and  Armagnacs  and  the 
consent  of  John  of  Burgundy  to  conclude  an  alliance  en- 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1S07— 1461.  545 

couraged  Henry  to  resume  his  attempt  to  recover  Nor- 
mandy. Whatever  may  have  been  his  aim  in  this  enter- 
prise— whether  it  were,  as  has  been  suggested,  to  provide 
a  refuge  for  his  house,  should  its  power  be  broken  in  Eng- 
land, or  simply  to  acquire  a  command  of  the  seas — the 
patience  and  skill  with  which  his  object  was  accomplished 
raise  him  high  in  the  rank  of  military  leaders.  Disem- 
barking in  July,  1417,  with  an  army  of  forty  thousand 
men  near  the  mouth  of  the  Touque,  he  stormed  Caen,  re- 
ceived the  surrender  of  Bayeux,  reduced  Alengon  and 
Falaise,  and  detaching  his  brother  the  Duke  of  Gloucester 
in  the  spring  of  1418  to  occupy  the  Cotentin  made  himself 
master  of  Avranches  and  Domfront.  With  Lower  Nor- 
mandy wholly  in  his  hands,  he  advanced  upon  Evreux, 
captured  Louviers,  and  seizing  Pont  de  I'Arche,  threw  his 
troops  across  the  Seine.  The  end  of  these  masterly  move- 
ments was  now  revealed.  Rouen  was  at  this  time  the 
largest  and  wealthiest  of  the  towns  of  France ;  its  walls 
were  defended  by  a  powerful  artillery ;  Alan  Blanch  ard, 
a  brave  and  resolute  patriot,  infused  the  fire  of  his  own 
temper  into  the  vast  population ;  and  the  garrison,  already 
strong,  was  backed  by  fifteen  thousand  citizens  in  arms. 
But  the  genius  of  Henry  was  more  than  equal  to  the  diflS- 
culties  with  which  he  had  to  deal.  He  had  secured  him- 
self from  an  attack  on  his  rear  by  the  reduction  of  Lower 
Normandy,  his  earlier  occupation  of  Harfleur  severed  the 
town  from  the  sea,  and  his  conquest  of  Pont  de  I'Arche 
cut  it  off  from  relief  on  the  side  of  Paris.  Slowly  but 
steadily  the  King  drew  his  lines  of  investment  round  the 
doomed  city ;  a  flotilla  was  brought  up  from  Harfleur,  a 
bridge  of  boats  thrown  over  the  Seine  above  the  town,  the 
deep  trenches  of  the  besiegers  protected  by  posts,  and  the 
desperate  sallies  of  the  garrison  stubbornly  beaten  back. 
For  six  months  Rouen  held  resolutel3''out,  but  famine  told 
fast  on  the  vast  throng  of  country  folk  who  had  taken 
refuge  within  its  walls.  Twelve  thousand  rf  these  were 
at  last  thrust  out  of  the  city  gates,  but  the  c:-)ld  policy  of 
Vol,  I.-35. 


5iG  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

the  conqueror  refused  them  passage,  and  they  perished 
between  the  trenches  and  the  walls.  In  the  hour  of  their 
agony  women  gave  birth  to  infants,  but  even  the  new-born 
babes  which  were  drawn  up  in  baskets  to  receive  baptism 
were  lowered  again  to  die  on  their  mothers'  breasts.  It 
was  little  better  within  the  town  itself.  As  winter  drew 
on  one-half  of  the  population  wasted  away.  "  War,"  said 
the  terrible  King,  "has  three  handmaidens  ever  waiting 
on  her,  Fire,  Blood,  and  Famine,  and  I  have  chosen  the 
meekest  maid  of  the  three."  But  his  demand  of  uncondi- 
tional surrender  nerved  the  citizens  to  a  resolve  of  despair ; 
they  determined  to  lire  the  city  and  fling  themselves  in  a 
mass  on  the  English  lines;  and  Henry,  fearful  lest  his 
prize  should  escape  him  at  the  last,  was  driven  to  offer 
terms.  Those  who  rejected  a  foreign  yoke  were  suffered 
to  leave  the  city,  but  his  vengeance  reserved  its  victim  in 
Alan  Blanchard,  and  the  brave  patriot  was  at  Henry's 
orders  put  to  death  in  cold  blood. 

A  few  sieges  completed  the  reduction  of  Normandy. 
The  King's  designs  were  still  limited  to  the  acquisition  of 
that  province ;  and  pausing  in  his  career  of  conquest,  he 
strove  to  win  its  loyalty  by  a  remission  of  taxation  and  a 
redress  of  grievances,  and  to  seal  its  possession  by  a  for- 
mal peace  with  the  French  Crown.  The  conferences, 
however,  which  were  held  for  this  purpose  at  Pontoise  in 
1419  failed  through  the  temjDorary  reconciliation  of  the 
French  factions,  while  the  length  and  expense  of  the  war 
began  to  rouse  remonstrance  and  discontent  at  home.  The 
King's  difficulties  were  at  their  height  when  the  assassina- 
tion of  John  of  Burgundy  at  Montereau  in  the  very  pres- 
ence of  the  Dauphin  with  whom  he  had  come  to  hold 
conference  rekindled  the  fires  of  civil  strife.  The  whole 
Burgundian  party  with  the  new  Duke  of  Burgundy,  Philip 
the  Good,  at  its  head  flung  itself  in  a  wild  thirst  for  re- 
venge into  Henry's  hands.  The  mad  King,  Charles  the 
Sixth,  with  his  Queen  and  daughters  were  in  Philip's 
power  J  and  in  his  resolve  to  exclude  the  Dauphin  from 


Chap.  5.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  547 

the  throne  the  Duke  stooped  to  buy  English  aid  bj^  giving 
Catharine,  the  eldest  of  the  French  princesses,  in  marriage 
to  Henry,  by  conferring  on  him  the  Regency  during  the 
life  of  Charles,  and  recognizing  his  succession  to  the  crown 
at  that  sovereign's  death.  A  treaty  which  embodied  these 
terms  was  solemnly  ratified  by  Charles  himself  in  a  con- 
ference at  Troyes  in  May,  1420;  and  Henry,  who  in  his 
new  capacity  of  Regent  undertook  to  conquer  in  the  name 
of  his  father-in-law  the  territory  held  by  the  Dauphin,  re- 
duced the  towns  of  the  Upper  Seine  and  at  Christmas  en- 
tered Paris  in  triumph  side  by  side  with  the  King.  The 
States-General  of  the  realm  were  solemnly  convened  to  the 
capital;  and  strange  as  the  provisions  of  the  Treaty  of 
Troj'es  must  have  seemed  they  were  confirmed  without  a 
murmur.  Henry  was  formally  recognized  as  the  future 
sovereign  of  France.  A  defeat  of  his  brother  Clarence  at 
Bauge  in  Anjou  in  the  spring  of  1421  called  him  back  to 
the  war.  His  reappearance  in  the  field  was  marked  by 
the  capture  of  Dreux,  and  a  repulse  before  Orleans  was 
redeemed  in  the  summer  of  1422  by  his  success  in  the  long 
and  obstinate  siege  of  Meaux.  At  no  time  had  the  for- 
tunes of  Henry  reached  a  higher  pitch  than  at  the  moment 
wnen  he  felt  the  touch  of  death.  In  the  month  which  fol- 
lowed the  surrender  of  Meaux  he  fell  ill  at  Corbeuil;  the 
rapidity  of  his  disease  baJGfled  the  skill  of  the  physicians; 
and  at  the  close  of  August,  with  a  strangely  characteristic 
regret  that  he  had  not  lived  to  achieve  the  conquest  of 
Jerusalem,  the  great  Conqueror  passed  away. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  WARS   OF  THE  ROSES. 
1422—1461. 

At  the  moment  when  death  so  suddenly  stayed  his  course 
the  greatness  of  Henry  the  Fifth  had  reached  its  highest 
point.     In  England  his  victories  had  hushed  the  last  mur- 
murs of  disaffection.     The  death  of  the  Earl  of  Cambridge, 
the  childhood  of  his  son,  removed  all  danger  from  the 
claims  of  the  house  of  York.     The  ruin  of  Lord  Cobham, 
the  formal   condemnation   of   Wyclif's  doctrines  in   the 
Council  of  Constance,  broke  the  political  and  the  religious 
strength  of  Lollardry.     Henry  had  won  the  Church  by  his 
orthodoxy,  the  nobles  by  his  warlike  prowess,  the  whole 
people  by  his  revival  of  the  glories  of  Cregy  and  Poitiers. 
In  France  his  cool  policy  had  transformed  him   from  a 
foreign  conqueror  into  a  legal  heir  to  the  crown.     The 
King  was  in  his  hands,  the  Queen  devoted  to  his  cause, 
the  Duke  of  Burgundy  was  his  ally,  his  title  of  Regent 
and  of  successor  to  the  throne  rested  on  the  formal  recog- 
nition of  the  estates  of  the  realm.     Although  southern 
France  still  clung  to  the  Dauphin,  the  progress  of  Henry 
to  the  very  moment  of  his  death  promised  a  speedy  mas- 
tery of  the  whole  country.     His  European  position  was  a 
commanding  one.     Lord  of  the  two  great  western  king- 
doms, he  was  linked  by  close  ties  of  blood  with  the  royal 
lines  of  Portugal  and  Castille;   and  his  restless  activity 
showed  itself  in  his  efforts  to  procure  the  adoption  of  his 
brother  John  as  her  successor  by  the  Queen  of  Naples  and 
in  the  marriage  of  a  younger  brother,  Humphrey,  with  Jac- 
queline, the  Countess  of  Holland  and  Hainault.     Dreams 
of  a  vaster  enterprise  filled  the  soul  of  the  great  conqueror 


Chap.  6.5  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  549 

himself ;  he  loved  to  read  the  story  of  Godfrey  of  Bouillon 
and  cherished  the  hope  of  a  crusade  which  should  beat 
back  the  Ottoman  and  again  rescue  the  Holy  Land  from 
heathen  hands.  Such  a  crusade  might  still  have  saved 
Constantinople,  and  averted  from  Europe  the  danger  which 
threatened  it  through  the  century  that  followed  the  fall  of 
the  imperial  city.  Nor  was  the  enterprise  a  dream  in  the 
hands  of  the  cool,  practical  warrior  and  ruler  of  whom  a 
contemporary  could  say  "  he  transacts  all  his  affairs  him- 
self, he  considers  well  before  he  undertakes  them,  he  never 
does  anything  fruitlessly." 

But  the  hopes  of  far-off  conquests  found  a  sudden  close 
in  Henry's  death.  Jlis  son,  Henry  the  Sixth  of  England, 
was  a  child  of  but  nine  months  old :  and  though  he  was 
peacefully  recognized  as  King  in  his  English  realm  and  as 
heir  to  the  throne  in  the  realm  of  France  his  position  was 
a  very  different  one  from  his  father's.  The  death  of  King 
Charles  indeed,  two  months  after  that  of  his  son-in-law, 
did  little  to  weaken  it ;  and  at  first  nothing  seemed  lost. 
The  Dauphin  at  once  proclaimed  himself  Charles  the  Sev- 
enth of  France :  but  Henry  was  owned  as  Sovereign  over 
the  whole  of  the  territory  which  Charles  had  actually  ruled ; 
and  the  incursions  which  the  partisans  of  Charles,  now 
reinforced  by  Lombard  soldiers  from  the  Milanese  and  by 
four  thousand  Scots  under  the  Earl  of  Douglas,  made  with 
fresh  vigor  across  the  Loire  were  easily  repulsed  by  Duke 
John  of  Bedford,  the  late  King's  brother,  who  had  been 
named  in  his  will  Regent  of  France.  In  genius  for  war 
as  in  political  capacity  John  was  hardly  inferior  to  Henry 
himself.  Drawing  closer  his  alliance  with  the  Duke  of 
Burgundy  by  marriage  with  that  prince's  sister,  and  hold- 
ing that  of  Brittany  by  a  patient  diplomacy,  he  completed 
the  conquest  of  Northern  France,  secured  his  communica- 
tions with  Normandy  by  the  capture  of  Meulan,  and  made 
himself  master  of  the  line  of  the  Yonne  by  a  victory  near 
Auxerre.  In  1424  the  Constable  of  Buchan  pushed  from 
the  Loire  to  the  very  borders  of  Normandy  to  arrest  his 


^^0  UlSTi^lJY  OK  TUK  KXOI.Ii^n   rKOri.R     IIUvik  iv. 


jM\>g»\v:is,  and  nttiU'ktHl  tho  Kiij^lish  ;vnu\  .it  N'onunul.  Init 
e»  rt^jnilso  hjvrtilv  Uvss  di^nstroxis  than  that  of  Ai;inoo\nt  Kt  t 
a  t.hir\\  of  Xho  Frtxnoh  ku\i;hthiH>il  on  tho  tioM :  and  [\\o 
lu>i;vnt  \va?4  p\v]vvnni>:  to  ol^^AS  tho  l.oiiv  for  a  t\nal  st.nig- 
glo  with  "  tho  Kiuj;-  of  Houri;vs"  as  tho  Kt\i;h:<h  in  nuvkory 
oalUni  OharhNs  tho  Sovonth  w  hon  his  oaiivr  of  viotovv  was 
Uiwkon  hv  tJ\n)hU\s  at  hinno. 

In  Rnj?lanil  tho  l^«\noastrian  tlnxuio  was  still  too  nowly 
«KstaWishiHi  to  rtMnain  nnshakoix  bv  tl\o  suiH.vssii\u  of  a  ohiUl 
of  nii\o  n\oi\ths  olil.  Ki>r  was  tho  yoinigt^r  brv^thor  of  Honry 
tlio  Fifth,  I'^uko  llmnphrtw  of  (.^loiuvstor.  whom  tho  lato 
King's  will  luunoil  as  Kogtxnt  of  tho  ivahn.  a  nuvii  of  tho 
sainoi  i\o\\lo  tomjvr  as  tho  Puko  of  l^oilfoM.  Intollootually 
the>  iS^irt>  ccf  IhnnjUiivy  is  tvnie*  of  ojitrtuiu^  intoivst.  for  he 
ia  thd  first  I2i^glislunai\  in  whom  wo  oan  trao©  tho  faint 
int^noni\>  of  that  rtwivjU  ivf  knowUn^gt^  which  was  to  bring 
alx>nt  tiu>  iwminjj  rt>^\asoojuH>  of  tho  wtNstorn  world .  \  \  tnn- 
j^hivy  was  i\ot  nu>rt>ly  a  jvU.rwn  of  jwts  aiul  nion  of  lot  tors, 
of  Lyiigat*:>  and  William  of  Worooistt^y  and  AbKn  \Vhot« 
Iiamst»><lt>  of  St,  AUv»i*s,  as  his  bn>thoT  and  othor  j^riuotvj 
erf  the*  day  h^ld  l[>e«t\u,  hut  his  p)tr\\nagt>  seems  to  h  i\o 
gjarnng f i\>m  a  gvmnno  intorost  in  hxtrnini^  itseJf.  Ho  w.'js 
a  BOiilons  eolltvtor  of  Kx>ks  and  was  ablo  to  bot^noath  io 
tho  VniYorsitv  i>f  Oxfortl  a  library  of  a  hnndrxxl  auvl  tliirtr 
Yolnmos.  A  gift  of  Kv^ks  indiHxi  w.as  a  passjx^rt  to  his 
favcwr,  and  Ivforo  the  title  of  each  volmno  ho  jH\ssi>sstHl  tho 
l^nko  wrvMo  wonla  whioh  cvsj^rossotl  his  love  i>f  thoni. 
**mo\m  bita^  mi^ndain,"  "my  worldly  gvx^dsT  lAdgatd 
tells  ns  how  "noiwitbsti\nding  his  sfato  and  digi\>to  his 
coragt>  noYordoth  ap^vvllo  to  studio  in  Kv>ks  of  antiquitio.*' 
His  studios  di\>w  lnn\  to  tho  rt^vival  «.xf  classic  learning 
which  was  l>oooming  ev  j>i»ssit\u  aci\\ss  tho  Alj«.  Ouo 
wandering  selu>ljvr  fiom  Forli,  who  tvx^k  tho  ixxm^xnis 
name  of  Titus  Livins  and  who  wrote  at  his  i>x]\it\st  the 
biogm|>l\v  of  Honry  tho  Fifth.  Hnn\phrt\v  made  his  ivurt 
poot  and  on^tor.  The  Dnko  pn^KUxly  aidtxl  Poggio  l^^ac- 
eioliui  in  his  Si\'vrch  for  olassical   inniuiscripts  when  btik 


CilAI'.  «.]  'IJJK    J'AHIJAMK.'.T.      i:{07  -HOI.  651 


viHitocJ  KjiglufifJ  in  l4'/iO.  lj<:<){r.u(\<)  An-.l'mu.  <,ik:  <A  i\\<i 
HcA\<)\nVH  who  ^?ii,h(;nj<J  alioul  CoHffj'*  '1'^  Mfi'lioi,  <\<:<\\<:iiUul 
to  liif/i  ;i  trariHlatio/i  of  Ux;  I'oUUc:'.  <>\  Ari;;t/jt.l<:,  ;in'l  wli<-.n 
unolJjf;/-  Italiufi  Hoholur  KOfjl,  \i\ui  a  J'j;i;.^;n<ijf.  of  ;i  \.r,ut\\\;i- 
tion  ol'  J'I;i.1o'h  HcpuUlic  tlio  Ouk*;  wrolo  1.o  h'^;.^  \\\n\  f,o  ;',(:nrj 
tJio  njHt.  Jiiii  wiUi  J1,H  lovo  of  loan/if)^  ilnfnfjlin;/ ';ofn- 
binwl  tJjo  ntHfJc'HHnoHri,  fJjo  ironjoralily,  Uj<;  hcIII  Jj,  I>ou;j'1- 

1<;HH   ;ifnf>if.ir;;j    wtlif:}j  l'M',\.V\Xi'AAitV/AiA    tli<:  ;i;^';    r^f    Ui<;    Ji'-.f),)  ■;- 

<<r)''  Mirt  lif(;  waH  Hulljod  by  HO/iHij;ii  <;/';'•.•,;•:'■.•,  In  .  ;'i<;'.'l 
of  |>owor  nJiook  }iiH  n<;j<})<;w'H  Uuonr;.  ;>.  ijU.<;jJy  w;j,  ■.  }i') 
alr<;;i.']y  <JiMiruHf,<;fJ  Ui;i.f  U)(;  );it,(;  Kifjj^'i-;  jj';;;im;i.f,iofj  of  l/j/n 
an  lv<;j<<;nf,  w;i,h  H';f,  ;i.'-;)'i<:  \)-j  Uj<;  roy;),l  (Jou/i'-il  ;)/)'!  Ijo  vv;!.;', 
HufT"*;/'';'!  orjiy  f,o  (>r<;,-:i'i<;  ;i,1,  ili;  'i':Ii  lj(;r;),f,iorj:';  wi'Ij  U)<-,  n'lun 
nal  f.it.l';  of  J'rol<-';f  or  'luri/j;,;  li'-'ifofi ';•:  ;jJ/,'  ti'  >  Tli'-,  /f:;).! 
dirof.'tion  of  ;i,ff;).ir!i  f'Jl  into  fjii;  Ij.i./j'i-,  of  )jj-,  ujj':!';.  if(;ijry 
Boaufort,  ffio  fiJHhop  of  VVifjol)<5T>t/<5r,  a  l<;j.^jfifna.t/;<j  ;-.';ij  of 
Jolirj  of  (^iauiit  hy  liin  rnirif,n;HH  fJatfiarifjo  Swynfor'] 

'J'wo  yoarn  of  ij-;<-l<--:-;of)po;-if,iofi  'Ji-;f^ij:-;f';'J  Oi<;  I)(ik<;  v/it.h 
thi.H  nouiifjaJ  l'r'>f,';'tof  -fjlj;,  ;i.fj'J  i//  11/.)  Ii<;  I'ft,  f.)i<;  /•<;;));/i 
to  pUKh  hJH  fortunnH  in  tho  .V^thm'lawlw.  .ifv/juoli//'?,  tfj<» 
r3auf^})t/;r  ;iii'i  }j<iJr«HH  of  WiJJJ-'ifn,  '"'ounl  of  JfoJI.ir.'l  ;in'l 
Ifairjault,  ha<i  oni^ltinlly  wc/itU-.'l  .I'Ani.  l)nU<:  of  iir.if/.-i/jt ; 
Ijijf.  ;iff.':;-  a  fow  y<;arH  of  Hlrifo  -Ijo  Ij.i'1  j^rocur*;']  a  fjivor';*) 
froin  ooo  of  t.}j«}  i.\i!f-<:  cl-.unr.niy-  v/Ijo  nov/  rjinpiif/jfj  U/o 
Papacy,  find  ;i.t,  f.h'; 'lo -o  of  H'nry  tjjt;  j-'iffii'K  r<;jj^n  f-;}io 
ha^l  HOW^rJii  ;Jj';lt':r  jrj  ]'irif.W;i.fi'J.  At,  })):•;  f^rolf/'tr'H  d'v'it.h 
t}iO  Ouk';  of  f/lou''':  J^-f  ;i,voy/<;'J  }ji'.  in.i! ;  i:>y<:  v/jth  h(:/  .-m'i 
adopt/;']  }jf;r  fj-'tir/j:-;  ;!■,  }ji-,  ov/n.  To  -  uj>[/0.' t,  tljt-ni  irj  ;)rr/i:-) 
howov*;/-,  ■//.I  •.  to  -'it  •..),»/;  i'}/jJip  of  j^jr^fijfj'ly,  who  v/fj;'.  -'il- 
T<:w]y  ]</jkiir^  i'ii.'/h.i(i  to  tij<;  iij}j<:nf,an'><;  of  hi'-  rid  Id  I'-,:-.:', 
n(;p}iow,  tijo  i>>'jko  of  lU-ixl/Ujii;  and  aH  ifc;  alJianc';  v/jt.h 
}>ijrj^undy  waH  IIjo  rn;jin  Btr<;nj<f,}i  of  thf;  Knglinh  <-nu¥/".  in 
Vviiuc/',,  n<;it,h<;r  i><;dford,  who  h;<d  h}iowji  hJH  h<-.:j'  ",  of  it.H 
vahj'j  hy  a  rnarriaj^o  with  thf;  hnka^H  HiHUfr^  nor  yix:  Erii^- 
liwh  council  wcrf;  likely  t/>  Kup[>'>rt  TWHiHnrttH  v/}jif;fi  would 
irnj-Kiril  or  wcakf;n  if..  Sucli  c/junidc-ridiOJir^.,  hov/o'vcr,  h;vl 
littlo  w«;ight  witij  if  iirnjJjn;y ;  ;ifjd  in  '';ct/>«l^;r,  \iVA^\it',  H<;t 


552  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Boob.  IV. 


sail  for  Calais  without  their  knowledge  with  a  body  of  five 
thousand  men.  In  a  few  months  he  succeeded  in  restor- 
ing Hainault  to  Jacqueline,  and  Philip  at  once  grew  luke- 
warm in  his  adherence  to  the  English  cause.  Though 
Bedford's  efforts  prevented  any  final  break,  the  Duke  with- 
drew his  forces  from  France  to  aid  John  of  Brabant  in  the 
recovery  of  Hainault  and  Holland.  Gloucester  challenged 
Philip  to  decide  their  claims  by  single  combat.  But  the 
enterprise  was  abandoned  as  hastily  as  it  had  been  begun. 
The  Duke  of  Gloucester  was  already  disgusted  with  Jac- 
queline and  enamored  of  a  lady  in  her  suite,  Eleanor,  the 
daughter  of  Lord  Cobham ;  and  in  the  summer  of  1425  he 
suddenly  returned  with  her  to  England  and  left  his  wife 
to  defend  herself  as  she  might. 

What  really  called  him  back  was  more  than  his  passion 
for  Eleanor  Cobham  or  the  natural  versatility  of  his  tem- 
per; it  was  the  advance  of  a  rival  in  England  to  further 
power  over  the  realm.  This  was  his  uncle,  Henry  Beau- 
fort, Bishop  of  Winchester.  The  bishop  had  already  played 
a  leading  political  part.  He  was  charged  with  having 
spurred  Henry  the  Fifth  to  the  ambitious  demands  of 
power  which  he  made  during  his  father's  lifetime ;  he  be- 
came chancellor  on  his  accession;  and  at  his  death  the 
king  left  him  guardian  of  the  person  of  his  boy.  He 
looked  on  Gloucester's  ambition  as  a  danger  to  his  charge, 
withstood  his  recognition  as  Regent,  and  remained  at  the 
head  of  the  Council  that  reduced  his  office  of  Protector  to 
a  name.  The  Duke's  absence  in  Hainault  gave  fresh 
strength  to  his  opponent :  and  the  nomination  of  the  Bishop 
to  the  chancellorship  marked  him  out  as  the  virtual  ruler 
of  the  realm.  On  the  news  of  this  appointment  Gloucester 
hurried  back  to  accept  what  he  looked  on  as  a  challenge  to 
open  strife.  The  Londoners  rose  in  his  name  to  attack 
Beaufort's  palace  in  Southwark,  and  at  the  close  of  1425 
Bedford  had  to  quit  his  work  in  France  to  appease  the 
strife.  In  the  following  year  Gloucester  laid  a  formal  Dill 
of  accusation  against  the  Bishop  before  the  Parliament, 


€hap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  553 

hut  its  rejection  forced  him  to  a  show  of  reconciliation, 
and  Bedford  was  able  to  return  to  France.  Hardly  was 
he  gone,  however,  when  the  quarrel  began  anew.  Hum- 
phrey found  a  fresh  weapon  against  Beaufort  in  his  accept- 
ance of  the  dignity  of  a  Cardinal  and  of  a  Papal  Legate  in 
England;  and  the  jealousy  which  this  step  aroused  drove 
the  Bishop  to  withdraw  for  a  while  from  the  Council  and 
to  give  place  to  his  unscrupulous  opponent. 

Beaufort  possessed  an  administrative  abilit}'',  the  loss  of 
which  was  a  heavy  blow  to  the  struggling  Regent  over 
sea,  where  Humphrey's  restless  ambition  had  already  par- 
alyzed Bedford's  efforts.  Much  of  his  strength  rested  on 
his  Burgundian  ally,  and  the  force  of  Burgundy  was  drawn 
to  other  quarters.  Though  Hainault  had  been  easily  won 
back  on  Gloucester's  retreat  and  Jacqueline  taken  prisoner, 
her  escape  from  prison  enabled  her  to  hold  Holland  for 
three  years  against  the  forces  of  the  Duke  of  Brabant  and 
after  his  death  against  those  of  the  Duke  of  Burgund}'  to 
whom  he  bequeathed  his  dominions.  The  political  strife 
in  England  itself  was  still  more  fatal  in  diverting  the  sup- 
plies of  men  and  money  which  were  needful  for  a  vigorous 
prosecution  of  the  war.  To  maintain  even  the  handful  of 
forces  left  to  him  Bedford  was  driven  to  have  recourse  to 
mere  forays  which  did  little  but  increase  the  general  mis- 
er}'. The  north  of  France  indeed  was  being  fast  reduced 
to  a  desert  by  the  bands  of  marauders  which  traversed  it. 
The  husbandmen  fled  for  refuge  to  the  towns  till  these  in 
fear  of  famine  shut  their  gates  against  them.  Then  in 
their  despair  they  threw  themselves  into  the  woods  and 
became  brigands  in  their  turn.  So  terrible  was  the  devas- 
tation that  two  hostile  bodies  of  troops  failed  at  one  time 
even  to  find  one  another  in  the  desolate  Beauce.  Misery 
and  disease  killed  a  hundred  thousand  people  in  Paris 
alone.  At  last  the  cessation  of  the  war  in  Holland  and  the 
temporary  lull  of  strife  in  England  enabled  the  Regent  to 
take  up  again  his  long  interrupted  advance  upon  the  South. 
Orleans  was  the  key  to  the  Loire ;  and  its  reduction  would 


654  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


throw  open  Bourges  where  Charles  held  liis  court.  Bed- 
ford's resources  indeed  were  still  inadequate  for  such  a 
siege ;  and  though  the  arrival  of  reinforcements  from  Eng- 
land under  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  enabled  him  to  invest  it 
in  October,  1428,  with  ten  thousand  men,  the  fact  that  so 
small  a  force  could  undertake  the  siege  of  such  a  town  as 
Orleans  shows  at  once  the  exhaustion  of  England  and  the 
terror  which  still  hung  over  France.  As  the  siege  went 
on,  however,  even  these  numbers  were  reduced.  A  new  fit 
of  jealousy  on  the  part  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  brought 
about  a  recall  of  his  soldiers  from  the  siege,  and  after  their 
withdrawal  only  three  thousand  Englishmen  remained  in 
the  trenches.  But  the  long  series  of  English  victories  had 
so  demoralized  the  French  soldiery  that  in  February,  1429, 
a  mere  detachment  of  archers  under  Sir  John  Fastolfe  re- 
pulsed a  whole  army  in  what  was  called  the  "  Battle  of  the 
Herrings"  from  the  convoy  of  provisions  which  the  vic- 
tors brought  in  triumph  into  the  camp  before  Orleans. 
Though  the  town  swarmed  with  men-at-arms  not  a  single 
sally  was  ventured  on  through  the  six  months'  siege,  and 
Charles  the  Seventh  did  nothing  for  its  aid  but  shut  him- 
self up  in  Chinon  and  weep  helplessly. 

But  the  success  of  this  handful  of  besiegers  rested  wholly 
on  the  spell  of  terror  which  had  been  cast  over  France, 
and  at  this  moment  the  appearance  of  a  peasant  maiden 
broke  the  spell.  Jeanne  Dare  was  the  child  of  a  laborer 
of  Domremy,  a  little  village  in  the  neighborhood  of  Vau- 
couleurs  on  the  borders  of  Lorraine  and  Champagne.  Just 
without  the  cottage  where  she  was  born  began  the  great 
woods  of  the  Vosges  where  the  children  of  Domremy  drank 
in  poetry  and  legend  from  fairy  ring  and  haunted  well, 
hung  their  flower  garlands  on  the  sacred  trees,  and  sang 
songs  to  the  "  good  people"  who  might  not  drink  of  the 
fountain  because  of  their  sins.  Jeanne  loved  the  forest; 
its  birds  and  beasts  came  lovingly  to  her  at  her  childish 
call.  But  at  home  men  saw  nothing  in  her  but  "  a  good 
girl,  simple  and  pleasant  in  her  ways,"  spinning  and  sew- 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  555 

mg  by  her  mother's  side  while  the  other  girls  went  to  the 
fields,  tender  to  the  poor  and  sick,  fond  of  church,  and 
listening  to  the  church-bell  with  a  dreamy  passion  of  de- 
light which  never  left  her.  This  quiet  life  was  broken  by 
the  storm  of  war  as  it  at  last  came  home  to  Domremy.  As 
the  outcasts  and  wounded  passed  by  the  little  village  the 
3'oung  peasant  girl  gave  them  her  bed  and  nursed  them  in 
their  sickness.  Her  whole  nature  summed  itself  up  in  one 
absorbing  passion:  she  "had  pitj^,"  to  use  the  phrase  for- 
ever on  her  lip,  "on  the  fair  realm  of  France."  As  her 
passion  grew  she  recalled  old  prophecies  that  a  maid  from 
the  Lorraine  border  should  save  the  land ;  she  saw  visions ; 
St.  Michael  appeared  to  her  in  a  flood  of  blinding  light, 
and  bade  her  go  to  the  help  of  the  King  and  restore  to  him 
his  realm.  " Messire, "  answered  the  girl,  "I  am  but  a 
poor  maiden ;  I  know  not  how  to  ride  to  the  wars,  or  to 
lead  men-at-arms."  The  archangel  returned  to  give  her 
courage,  and  to  tell  her  of  "  the  pity"  that  there  was  in 
heaven  for  the  fair  reahn  of  France.  The  girl  wept  and 
longed  that  the  angels  who  appeared  to  her  would  carry 
her  away,  but  her  mission  was  clear.  It  was  in  vain  that 
her  father  when  he  heard  her  purpose  swore  to  drown  her 
ere  she  should  go  to  the  field  with  men-at-arms.  It  was 
in  vain  that  the  priest,  the  wise  people  of  the  village,  the 
captain  of  Vaucouleurs,  doubted  and  refused  to  aid  her. 
''  I  must  go  to  the  King,"  persisted  the  peasant  girl,  "  even 
if  I  wear  my  limbs  to  the  very  knees."  "  I  had  far  rather 
rest  and  spin  by  mj^  mother's  side,"  she  pleaded  with  a 
touching  pathos,  "  for  this  is  no  work  of  my  choosing,  but 
I  must  go  and  do  it,  for  my  Lord  wills  it."  "And  who," 
they  asked,  "is  your  Lord?"  "He  is  God."  Words  such 
as  these  touched  the  rough  captain  at  last :  he  took  Jeanne 
by  the  hand  and  swore  to  lead  her  to  the  King.  She 
reached  Chinon  in  the  opening  of  March,  but  here  too  she 
found  hesitation  and  doubt.  The  theologians  proved  from 
their  books  that  thoy  ought  not  to  believe  her.  "  There  is 
more  in  God's  book  than  in  yours,"  Jeanne  answered  sim- 


656  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

ply.  At  last  Charles  himself  received  her  in  the  midst  of 
a  throng  of  nobles  and  soldiers.  "Gentle  Dauphin,"  said 
the  girl,  "  my  name  is  Jeanne  the  Maid.  The  Heavenly 
King  sends  me  to  tell  you  that  you  shall  be  anointed  and 
crowned  in  the  town  of  Rheims,  and  you  shall  be  lieuten- 
ant of  the  Heavenly  King  who  is  the  King  of  France." 

Orleans  had  already  been  driven  by  famine  to  offers  of 
surrender  when  Jeanne  appeared  in  the  French  court,  and 
a  force  was  gathering  under  the  Count  of  Dunois  at  Blois 
for  a  final  effort  at  its  relief.  It  was  at  the  head  of  this 
force  that  Jeanne  placed  herself.  The  girl  was  in  her 
eighteenth  year,  tall,  finely  formed,  with  all  the  vigor  and 
activity  of  her  peasant  rearing,  able  to  stay  from  dawn  to 
nightfall  on  horseback  without  meat  or  drink.  As  she 
mounted  her  charger,  clad  in  white  armor  from  head  to 
foot,  with  a  great  white  banner  studded  with  fleur-de-lys 
waving  over  her  head,  she  seemed  "  a  thing  wholly  divine, 
whether  to  see  or  hear."  The  ten  thousand  men-at-arms 
who  followed  her  from  Blois,  rough  plunderers  whose  only 
prayer  was  that  of  La  Hire,  "  Sire  Dieu,  I  pray  you  to  do 
for  La  Hire  what  La  Hire  would  do  for  you,  were  you  cap- 
tain-at-arms  and  he  God,"  left  off  their  oaths  and  foul  liv- 
ing at  her  word  and  gathered  round  the  altars  on  their 
march.  Her  shrewd  peasant  humor  helped  her  to  manage 
the  wild  soldiery,  and  her  followers  laughed  over  their 
camp-fires  at  an  old  warrior  who  had  been  so  puzzled  by 
her  prohibition  of  oaths  that  she  suffered  him  still  to  swear 
by  his  baton.  For  in  the  midst  of  her  enthusiasm  her 
good  sense  never  left  her.  The  people  crowded  round  her 
as  she  rode  along,  praying  her  to  work  miracles,  and  bring- 
ing crosses  and  chaplets  to  be  blest  by  her  touch.  "  Touch 
them  yourself,"  she  said  to  an  old  Dame  Margaret;  "your 
touch  will  be  just  as  good  as  mine."  But  her  faith  in  her 
mission  remained  as  firm  as  ever.  "  The  Maid  prays  and 
requires  you,"  she  wrote  to  Bedford,  "to  work  no  more 
distraction  in  France  but  to  come  in  her  company  to  rescue 
\he  Holy  Sepulchre  from  the  Turk."     "I  bring  you,"  she 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  557 


told  Dunois  when  he  sallied  out  of  Orleans  to  meet  her 
after  her  two  days'  march  from  Blois,  "  I  bring  you  the 
best  aid  ever  sent  to  any  one,  the  aid  of  the  King  of 
Heaven. "  The  besiegers  looked  on  overawed  as  she  en- 
tered Orleans,  and  riding  round  the  walls,  bade  the  people 
shake  off  their  fear  of  the  forts  which  surrounded  them. 
Her  enthusiasm  drove  the  hesitating  generals  to  engage 
the  handful  of  besiegers,  and  the  enormous  disproportion 
of  forces  at  once  made  itself  felt.  Fort  after  fort  was  taken 
till  only  the  strongest  remained,  and  then  the  council  of 
war  resolved  to  adjourn  the  attack.  "You  have  taken 
your  counsel,"  replied  Jeanne,  "and  I  take  mine."  Plac- 
ing herself  at  the  head  of  the  men-at-arms,  she  ordered  the 
gates  to  be  thrown  open,  and  led  them  against  the  fort. 
Few  as  they  were,  the  English  fought  desperately,  and  the 
Maid,  who  had  fallen  wounded  while  endeavoring  to  scale 
its  walls,  was  borne  into  a  vineyard,  while  Dunois  sounded 
the  retreat.  "  Wait  a  while !"  the  girl  imperiously  pleaded, 
"  eat  and  drink !  so  soon  as  my  standard  touches  the  wall 
you  shall  enter  the  fort."  It  touched,  and  the  assailants 
burst  in.  On  the  next  day  the  siege  was  abandoned,  and 
on  the  eighth  of  May  the  force  which  had  conducted  it 
withdrew  in  good  order  to  the  north. 

In  the  midst  of  her  triumph  Jeanne  still  remained  the 
pure,  tender-hearted  peasant  girl  of  the  Vosges.  Her  first 
visit  as  she  entered  Orleans  was  to  the  great  church,  and 
there,  as  she  knelt  at  mass,  she  wept  in  such  a  passion  of 
devotion  that  "  all  the  people  wept  with  her. "  Her  tears 
burst  forth  afresh  at  her  first  sight  of  bloodshed  and  of  the 
corpses  strewn  over  the  battle-field.  She  grew  frightened 
at  her  first  wound,  and  only  threw  off  the  touch  of  womanly 
fear  when  she  heard  the  signal  for  retreat.  Yet  more 
womanly  was  the  purity  with  which  she  passed  through 
the  brutal  warriors  of  a  mediaeval  camp.  It  was  her  care 
for  her  honor  that  led  her  to  clothe  herself  in  a  soldier's 
dress.  She  wept  hot  tears  when  told  of  the  foul  taunts  of 
the  English,  and  called  passionately  on  God  to  witness  her 


558  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  TV. 

chastity.  "Yield  thee,  yield  thee,  Glasdale,"  she  cried  to 
the  English  warrior  whose  insults  had  been  foulest  as  he 
fell  wounded  at  her  feet,  "  you  called  me  harlot !  I  have 
great  pit}^  on  your  soul."  But  all  thought  of  herself  was 
lost  in  the  thought  of  her  mission.  It  was  in  vain  that 
the  French  generals  strove  to  remain  on  the  Loire.  Jeanne 
was  resolute  to  complete  her  task,  and  while  the  English 
remained  panic-stricken  around  Paris  she  brought  Charles 
to  march  upon  Rheims,  the  old  crowning-place  of  the 
Kings  of  France.  Troyes  and  Chalons  submitted  as  she 
reached  them,  Rheims  drove  out  the  English  garrison  and 
threw  open  her  gates  to  the  king. 

With  his  coronation  the  Maid  felt  her  errand  to  be  over, 
"O  gentle  King,  the  pleasure  of  God  is  done,"  she  cried, 
as  she  flung  herself  at  the  feet  of  Charles  and  asked  leave 
to  go  home.  "  Would  it  were  His  good  will,"  she  pleaded 
with  the  Archbishop  as  he  forced  her  to  remain,  "  that  I 
might  go  and  keep  sheep  once  more  with  my  sisters  and 
my  brothers :  they  would  be  so  glad  to  see  me  again !"  But 
the  policy  of  the  French  Court  detained  her  while  the 
cities  of  the  North  of  France  opened  their  gates  to  the 
newly-consecrated  King.  Bedford  however,  who  had  been 
left  without  money  or  men,  had  now  received  reinforce- 
ments. Excluded  as  Cardinal  Beaufort  had  been  from  the 
Council  by  Gloucester's  intrigues,  he  poured  his  wealth 
without  stint  into  the  exhausted  treasury  till  his  loans  to 
the  Crown  reached  the  sum  of  half-a-million ;  and  at  this 
crisis  he  unscrupulously  diverted  an  army  which  he  had 
levied  at  his  own  cost  for  a  crusade  against  the  Hussites 
in  Bohemia  to  his  nephew's  aid.  The  tide  of  success 
turned  again.  Charles,  after  a  repulse  before  the  walls 
of  Paris,  fell  back  behind  the  Loire ;  while  the  towns  on 
the  Oise  submitted  anew  to  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  whose 
more  active  aid  Bedford  had  bought  by  the  cession  of 
Champagne.  In  the  struggle  against  Duke  Philip  Jeanne 
fought  with  her  usual  bravery  but  with  the  fatal  conscious- 
ness that  her  mission  was  at  an  end,  and  during  the  de- 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  559 

fence  of  Compiegne  in  the  May  of  1430  she  fell  into  the 
power  of  the  Bastard  of  Vendome,  to  be  sold  by  her  captor 
into  the  hands  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  and  by  the  Duke 
into  the  hands  of  the  English.  To  the  English  her  tri- 
umphs were  victories  of  sorcery,  and  after  a  year's  im- 
prisonment she  was  brought  to  trial  on  a  charge  of  heresy 
before  an  ecclesiastical  court  with  the  Bishop  of  Beauvais 
at  its  head. 

Throughout  the  long  process  which  followed  every  art 
was  used  to  entangle  her  in  her  talk.  But  the  simple 
shrewdness  of  the  peasant  girl  foiled  the  efforts  of  her 
judges.  "  Do  you  believe,"  they  asked,  "  that  you  are  in  a 
state  of  grace?"  ''If  I  am  not,"  she  replied,  "  God  will 
put  me  in  it.  If  I  am,  God  will  keep  me  in  it."  Her 
capture,  they  argued,  showed  that  God  had  forsaken  her, 
"  Since  it  has  pleased  God  that  I  should  be  taken,"  she  an- 
swered meekly,  "it  is  for  the  best."  "Will  you  submit," 
they  demanded  at  last,  "  to  the  judgment  of  the  Church 
Militant?"  "  I  have  come  to  the  King  of  France,"  Jeanne 
replied,  "  by  commission  from  God  and  from  the  Church 
Triumphant  above :  to  that  Church  I  submit."  "  I  had  far 
rather  die,"  she  ended  passionately,  "than  renounce  what 
I  have  done  by  my  Lord's  command."  They  deprived  her 
of  mass.  "  Our  Lord  can  make  me  hear  it  without  your 
aid,"  she  said,  weeping.  "Do  your  voices,"  asked  the 
judges,  "  forbid  you  to  submit  to  the  Church  and  the  Pope'?" 
"Ah,  no!  our  Lord  first  served."  Sick,  and  deprived  of 
all  religious  aid,  it  was  no  wonder  that  as  the  long  trial 
dragged  on  and  question  followed  question  Jeanne's  firm- 
ness wavered.  On  the  charge  of  sorcery  and  diabolical 
possession  she  still  appealed  firmly  to  God.  "  I  hold  to 
my  Judge,"  she  said,  as  her  earthly  judges  gave  sentence 
against  her,  "  to  the  King  of  Heaven  and  Earth.  God  has 
always  been  my  Lord  in  all  that  I  have  done.  The  devil 
has  never  had  power  over  me."  It  was  only  with  a  view 
to  be  delivered  from  the  military  prison  and  transferred 
to  the  prisons  of  the  Church  that  she  consented  to  a  formal 


560  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH"  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

abjuration  of  heresy.  She  feared  in  fact  among  the  sol- 
diery those  outrages  to  her  honor,  to  guard  against  which 
she  had  from  the  first  assumed  the  dress  of  a  man.  In 
the  eyes  of  the  Church  her  dress  was  a  crime  and  she  aban- 
doned it ;  but  a  renewed  affront  forced  her  to  resume  the 
one  safeguard  left  her,  and  the  return  to  it  was  treated  as 
a  relapse  into  heresy  which  doomed  her  to  death.  At  the 
close  of  May,  1431,  a  great  pile  was  raised  in  the  market- 
place of  Rouen  where  her  statue  stands  now.  Even  the 
brutal  soldiers  who  snatched  the  hated  "  witch"  from  the 
hands  of  the  clergy  and  hurried  her  to  her  doom  were 
hushed  as  she  reached  the  stake.  One  indeed  passed  to 
her  a  rough  cross  he  had  made  from  a  stick  he  held,  and 
she  clasped  it  to  her  bosom.  As  her  eyes  ranged  over  the 
city  from  the  lofty  scaffold  she  was  heard  to  murmur, 
"  O  Rouen,  Rouen,  I  have  great  fear  lest  you  suffer  for 
my  death. "  "  Yes !  my  voices  were  of  God !"  she  suddenly 
cried  as  the  last  moment  came ;  "  they  have  never  deceived 
me !"  Soon  the  flames  reached  her,  the  girl's  head  sank 
on  her  breast,  there  was  one  cry  of  "  Jesus !" — "  We  are 
lost,"  an  English  soldier  muttered  as  the  crowd  broke  up; 
"we  have  burned  a  Saint." 

The  English  cause  was  indeed  irretrievably  lost.  In 
spite  of  a  pompous  coronation  of  the  boy-king  Henry  at 
Paris  at  the  close  of  1431,  Bedford  with  the  cool  wisdom 
of  his  temper  seems  to  have  abandoned  from  this  time  all 
hope  of  permanently  retaining  France  and  to  have  fallen 
back  on  his  brother's  original  plan  of  securing  Normandy. 
Henry's  Court  was  established  for  a  year  at  Rouen,  a  uni- 
Tersity  founded  at  Caen,  and  whatever  rapine  and  disor- 
der might  be  permitted  elsewhere,  justice,  good  govern- 
ment, and  security  for  trade  were  steadily  maintained 
through  the  favored  provinces.  At  home  Bedford  was 
resolutely  backed  by  Cardinal  Beaufort,  whose  services  to 
the  state  as  well  as  his  real  powers  had  at  last  succeeded 
in  outweighing  Duke  Humphrey's  opposition  and  in  re- 
Btoring  him  to  the  head  of  the  royal  Council.     Beaufort's 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  561 

diplomatic  ability  was  seen  in  the  truces  he  wrung  from 
Scotland,  and  in  his  personal  efforts  to  prevent  the  impend- 
ing reconciliation  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  with  the 
French  King.  But  the  death  of  the  duke's  sister,  who 
was  the  wife  of  Bedford,  severed  the  last  link  which  bound 
Philip  to  the  English  cause.  He  pressed  for  peace :  and 
conferences  for  this  purpose  were  held  at  Arras  in  1435. 
Their  failure  only  served  him  as  a  pretext  for  concluding 
a  formal  treaty  with  Charles ;  and  his  desertion  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  yet  more  fatal  blow  to  the  English  cause  in  the 
death  of  Bedford.  The  loss  of  the  Regent  was  the  signal 
for  the  loss  of  Paris.  In  the  spring  of  1436  the  city  rose 
suddenly  against  its  English  garrison  and  declared  for 
King  Charles.  Henry's  dominion  shrank  at  once  to  Nor- 
mandy and  the  outlying  fortresses  of  Picardy  and  Maine. 
But  reduced  as  they  were  to  a  mere  handful,  and  fronted 
by  a  whole  nation  in  arms,  the  English  soldiers  struggled 
on  with  as  desperate  a  bravery  as  in  their  days  of  triumph. 
Lord  Talbot,  the  most  daring  of  their  leaders,  forded  the 
Somme  with  the  water  up  to  his  chin  to  relieve  Crotoy, 
and  threw  his  men  across  the  Oise  in  the  face  of  a  French 
army  to  relieve  Pontoise. 

Bedford  found  for  the  moment  an  able  and  vigorous  suc- 
cessor in  the  Duke  of  York.  Richard  of  York  was  the  son 
of  the  Earl  of  Cambridge  who  had  been  beheaded  by  Henry 
the  Fifth ;  his  mother  was  Anne,  the  heiress  of  the  Morti- 
mers and  of  their  claim  to  the  English  crown  as  represen- 
tatives of  the  third  son  of  Edward  the  Third,  Lionel  of 
Clarence.  It  was  to  assert  this  claim  on  his  son's  behalf 
that  the  Earl  embarked  in  the  fatal  plot  which  cost  him 
his  head.  But  his  death  left  Richard  a  mere  boy  in  the 
wardship  of  the  Crown,  and  for  years  to  come  all  danger 
from  his  pretensions  were  at  an  end.  Nor  did  the  young 
Duke  give  any  sign  of  a  desire  to  assert  them  as  he  grew 
to  manhood.  He  appeared  content  with  a  lineage  and 
wealth  which  placed  him  at  the  head  of  the  English  baron- 
age ;  for  he  had  inherited  from  his  uncle  the  Dukedom  of 


562  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [BOOK  IV. 

York,  his  wide  possessions  embraced  the  estates  of  the 
families  which  united  in  him,  the  houses  of  York,  of  Clar- 
ence, and  of  Mortimer,  and  his  double  descent  from  Ed- 
ward the  Third,  if  it  did  no  more,  set  him  near  to  the 
Crown.  The  nobles  looked  up  to  him  as  the  head  of  their 
order,  and  his  political  position  recalled  that  of  the  Lan- 
castrian Earls  at  an  earlier  time.  But  the  position  of 
Richard  was  as  yet  that  of  a  faithful  servant  of  the  Crown ; 
and  as  Regent  of  France  he  displayed  tne  abilities  both  of 
a  statesman  and  of  a  general.  During  the  brief  space  of 
his  regency  the  tide  of  ill  fortune  was  stemmed ;  and  towns 
and  castles  were  recovered  along  the  border. 

His  recall  after  a  twelvemonth's  success  is  the  first  in- 
dication of  the  jealousy  which  the  ruling  house  felt  of 
triumphs  gained  by  one  who  might  some  day  assert  his 
claim  to  the  throne.  Two  years  later,  in  1440,  the  Duke 
was  restored  to  his  post,  but  it  was  now  too  late  to  do  more 
than  stand  on  the  defensive,  and  all  York's  ability  was 
required  to  preserve  Normandy  and  Maine.  Men  and 
money  alike  came  scantily  from  England — where  the  Duke 
of  Gloucester,  freed  from  the  check  which  Bedford  had 
laid  on  him  while  he  lived,  was  again  stirring  -;*gainst 
Beaufort  and  the  Council.  But  his  influence  had  been 
weakened  by  a  marriage  with  his  mistress,  Eleanor  Cob- 
ham,  and  in  1441  it  was  all  but  destroyed  by  an  incident 
which  paints  the  temper  of  the  time.  The  restless  love  of 
knowledge  which  was  the  one  redeeming  feature  in  Duke 
Humphrey's  character  drew  to  him  not  only  scholars  bvit 
a  horde  of  the  astrologers  and  claimants  of  magical  powers 
who  were  the  natural  product  of  an  age  in  which  the  faith 
of  the  Middle  Ages  was  dying  out  before  the  double  attack 
of  scepticism  and  heresy.  Among  these  was  a  priest 
named  Roger  Bolinbroke.  Bolinbroke  was  seized  on  a 
charge  of  compassing  the  King's  death  by  sorcery;  and 
the  sudden  flight  of  Eleanor  Cobham  to  the  sanctuary  at 
Westminster  was  soon  explained  by  a  like  accusation. 
Her  judges  found  that  she  had  made  a  waxen  image  of  the 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  563 


King  anu  slowly  melted  it  at  a  fire,  a  process  which  was 
held  to  account  for  Henry's  growing  weakness  both  of 
body  and  mind.  The  Duchess  was  doomed  to  penance  for 
her  crime;  she  was  led  bareheaded  and  barefooted  in  a 
white  penance-sheet  through  the  streets  of  London,  and 
then  thrown  into  prison  for  life.  Humphrey  never  rallied 
from  the  blow.  But  his  retirement  from  public  affairs 
was  soon  followed  by  that  of  his  rival.  Cardinal  Beaufort. 
Age  forced  Beaufort  to  withdraw  to  Winchester ;  and  the 
Council  was  from  that  time  swayed  mainly  by  the  Earl  of 
Suffolk,  William  de  la  Pole,  a  grandson  of  the  minister  of 
Richard  the  Second. 

Few  houses  had  served  the  Crown  more  faithfully  than 
that  of  De  la  Pole.  His  father  fell  at  the  siege  of  Har- 
fleur ;  his  brother  had  been  slain  at  Agincourt ;  William 
himself  had  served  and  been  taken  prisoner  in  the  war 
with  France.  But  as  a  statesman  he  was  powerless  in  the 
hands  of  the  Beauforts,  and  from  this  moment  the  polic}^ 
of  the  Beauforts  drew  England  nearer  and  nearer  to  the 
chaos  of  civil  war.  John  Beaufort,  Duke  of  Somerset, 
and  his  brother,  Edmund,  Earl  of  Dorset,  were  now  the 
representatives  of  this  house.  They  were  grandsons  of 
John  of  Gaunt  by  his  mistress,  Catharine  Swynford.  In 
later  days  Catharine  became  John's  wife,  and  his  uncle's 
influence  over  Richard  at  the  close  of  that  King's  reign 
was  shown  in  a  royal  ordinance  which  legitimated  those 
of  his  children  by  her  who  had  been  borne  before  marriage. 
The  ordinance  was  confirmed  by  an  Act  of  Parliament, 
which  as  it  passed  the  Houses  was  expressed  in  the  widest 
and  most  general  terms ;  but  before  issuing  this  as  a  stat- 
ute Henry  the  Fourth  inserted  provisions  which  left  the 
Beauforts  illegitimate  in  blood  so  far  as  regarded  the  in- 
heritance of  the  crown.  Such  royal  alterations  of  statutes, 
however,  had  been  illegal  since  the  time  of  Edward  the 
Third;  and  the  Beauforts  never  recognized  the  force  of 
this  provision.  But  whether  they  stood  in  the  line  of  suc- 
cession or  no,  the  favor  v/hich  was  shown  them  alike  by 


564  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

Henry  the  Fifth  and  his  son  drew  them  close  to  the  throne, 
and  the  weakness  of  Henry  the  Sixth  left  them  at  this  mo- 
ment the  mainstay  of  the  House  of  Lancaster.  Edmund 
Beaufort  had  taken  an  active  part  in  the  French  wars, 
and  had  distinguished  himself  by  the  capture  of  Harfleur 
and  the  relief  of  Calais.  But  he  was  hated  for  his  pride 
and  avarice,  and  the  popular  hate  grew  as  he  showed  his 
jealousy  of  the  Duke  of  York.  Loyal  indeed  as  Richard 
had  proved  himself  as  yet,  the  pretensions  of  his  house 
were  the  most  formidable  danger  which  fronted  the  throne ; 
and  with  a  weak  aiid  imbecile  King  we  can  hardly  won- 
der that  the  Beauforts  deemed  it  madness  to  leave  in  the 
Duke's  hands  the  wide  power  of  a  Regent  in  France  and 
the  command  of  the  armies  across  the  sea.  In  1444  York 
was  recalled,  and  his  post  was  taken  by  Edmund  Beaufort 
himself. 

But  the  claim  which  York  drew  from  the  house  of  Mor- 
timer was  not  his  onl}'  claim  to  the  crown ;  as  the  descend- 
ant of  Edward  the  Third's  fifth  son  the  crown  would  nat- 
urally devolve  upon  him  on  the  extinction  of  the  House  of 
Lancaster,  and  of  the  direct  line  of  that  house  Henry  the 
Sixth  was  the  one  survivor.  It  was  to  check  these  hopes 
by  continuing  the  Lancastrian  succession  that  Suffolk  in 
1445  brought  about  the  marriage  of  the  young  King  with 
Margaret,  the  daughter  of  Duke  Rene  of  Anjou.  But  the 
marriage  had  another  end.  The  English  Ministers  were 
anxious  for  the  close  of  the  war ;  and  in  the  kinship  betAveen 
Margaret  and  King  Charles  of  France  they  saw  a  chance  of 
bringing  it  about.  A  truce  was  concluded  as  a  prelude  to 
a  future  peace,  and  the  marriage  treaty  paved  the  way  for 
it  by  ceding  not  only  Anjou,  of  which  England  possessed 
nothing,  but  Maine,  the  bulwark  of  Normandy,  to  Duke 
Rene.  For  his  part  in  this  negotiation  Suffolk  was  raised 
to  the  rank  of  marquis ;  but  the  terms  of  the  treaty  and 
the  delays  which  still  averted  a  final  peace  gave  new 
strength  to  the  war-party  with  Gloucester  at  its  head,  and 
troubles  were  looked  for  in  the  Parliament  which  met  at 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  565 


the  opening  of  1447.  The  danger  was  roughly  met.  Glou- 
cester was  arrested  as  he  rode  to  Parliament  on  a  charge 
of  secret  conspiracy ;  and  a  few  days  later  he  was  found 
dead  in  his  lodging.  Suspicions  of  murder  were  added  to 
the  hatred  against  Suffolk;  and  his  voluntary  submission 
to  an  inquiry  by  the  Council  into  his  conduct  in  the  mar- 
riage treaty,  which  was  followed  by  his  acquittal  of  all 
blame,  did  little  to  counteract  this.  What  was  yet  more 
fatal  to  Suffolk  was  the  renewal  of  the  war.  In  the  face 
of  the  agitation  against  it  the  English  ministers  had  never 
dared  to  execute  the  provisions  of  the  marriage-treaty ;  and 
in  1448  Charles  the  Seventh  sent  an  army  to  enforce  the 
cession  of  Le  Mans.  Its  surrender  averted  the  struggle 
for  a  moment.  But  in  the  spring  of  1449  a  body  of  Eng- 
lish soldiers  from  Normandy,  mutinous  at  their  want  of 
pay,  crossed  the  border  and  sacked  the  rich  town  of  Fou- 
geres  in  Brittany.  Edmund  Beaufort,  who  had  now  suc- 
ceeded to  the  dukedom  of  Somerset,  protested  his  innocence 
of  this  breach  of  truce,  but  he  either  could  not  or  would 
not  make  restitution,  and  the  war  was  renewed.  From 
this  moment  it  was  a  mere  series  of  French  successes.  In 
two  months  half  Normandy  was  in  the  hands  of  Dunois; 
Rouen  rose  against  her  feeble  garrison  and  threw  open  her 
gates  to  Charles ;  and  the  defeat  at  Fourmigny  of  an  Eng- 
lish force  which  was  sent  to  Somerset's  aid  was  a  signal 
for  revolt  throughout  the  rest  of  the  provinces.  The  sur- 
render of  Cherbourg  in  August,  1450,  left  Henry  not  a 
foot  of  Norman  ground. 

The  loss  of  Normandy  was  generally  laid  to  the  charge 
of  Somerset.  He  was  charged  with  a  miserly  hoarding  of 
supplies  as  well  as  planning  in  conjunction  with  Suffolk 
the  fatal  sack  of  Fougeres.  His  incapacity  as  a  general 
added  to  the  resentment  at  his  recall  of  the  Duke  of  York, 
a  recall  which  had  been  marked  as  a  disgrace  by  the  dis- 
patch of  Richard  into  an  honorable  banishment  as  lieu-^ 
tenant  of  Ireland.  But  it  was  this  very  recall  which  proved 
most  helpful  to  York.     Had  he  remained  in  France  he 


566  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

could  hardly  have  averted  the  loss  of  Normandy,  though 
he  might  have  delayed  it.  As  it  was  the  shame  of  its  loss 
fell  upon  Somerset,  while  the  general  hatred  of  the  Beau- 
forts  and  the  growing  contempt  of  the  King  whom  they 
ruled  expressed  itself  in  a  sudden  rush  of  popular  favor 
toward  the  man  whom  his  disgrace  had  marked  out  as  the 
object  of  their  ill-will.  From  this  moment  the  hopes  of 
a  better  and  a  stronger  government  centred  themselves  in 
the  Duke  of  York.  The  news  of  the  French  successes  was 
at  once  followed  by  an  outbreak  of  national  wrath.  Polit- 
ical ballads  denounced  Suffolk  as  the  ape  with  his  clog 
that  had  tied  Talbot,  the  good  "  dog"  who  was  longing  to 
grip  the  Frenchmen.  When  the  Bishop  of  Chichester, 
who  had  been  sent  to  pay  the  sailors  at  Portsmouth,  strove 
to  put  off  the  men  with  less  than  their  due,  they  fell  on 
him  and  slew  him.  Suffolk  was  impeached,  and  only 
saved  from  condemnation  by  submitting  himself  to  the 
King's  mercy.  He  was  sent  into  exile,  but  as  he  crossed 
the  sea  he  was  intercepted  by  a  ship  of  Kentishmen,  be- 
headed, and  his  body  thrown  on  the  sands  at  Dover. 

Kent  was  the  centre  of  the  national  resentment.  It  was 
the  great  manufacturing  district  of  the  day,  seething  with 
a  busy  population,  and  especially  concerned  with  the 
French  contest  through  the  piracy  of  the  Cinque  Ports. 
Every  house  along  its  coast  showed  some  spoil  from  the 
wars.  Here  more  than  anywhere  the  loss  of  the  great 
province  whose  cliffs  could  be  seen  from  its  shores  was  felt 
as  a  crowning  disgrace,  and  as  we  shall  see  from  the  after- 
complaints  of  its  insurgents  political  wrongs  added  their 
fire  to  the  national  shame.  Justice  was  ill  administered ; 
taxation  was  unequal  and  extortionate.  Redress  for  such 
evils  would  now  naturally  have  been  sought  from  Parlia- 
ment; but  the  weakness  of  the  Crown  gave  the  great  nobles 
power  to  rob  the  freeholders  of  their  franchise  and  return 
the  knights  of  the  shire.  Nor  could  redress  be  looked  for 
from  the  Court.  The  murder  of  Suffolk  was  the  act  of 
Kentishmen,  and  Suffolk's  friends  still  held  control  over 


Ch\p.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  5G7 

the  royal  councils.  The  one  hope  of  reform  lay  in  arms; 
and  in  the  summer  of  1450,  while  the  last  of  the  Norman 
fortresses  were  throwing  open  their  gates,  the  discontent 
broke  into  open  revolt.  The  rising  spread  from  Kent  over 
Surrey  and  Sussex.  Everywhere  it  was  general  and  or- 
ganized— a  military  levy  of  the  yeomen  of  the  three  shires. 
The  parishes  sent  their  due  contingent  of  armed  men ;  we 
know  that  in  many  hundreds  the  constables  formally  sum- 
moned their  legal  force  to  war.  The  insurgents  were 
joined  by  more  than  a  hundred  esquires  and  gentlemen ; 
and  two  great  landholders  of  Sussex,  the  Abbot  of  Battle 
and  the  Prior  of  Lewes,  openly  favored  their  cause.  John 
Cade,  a  soldier  of  some  experience  in  the  French  wars, 
took  at  this  crisis  the  significant  name  of  Mortimer  and 
placed  himself  at  their  head.  The  army,  now  twenty 
thousand  men  strong,  marched  in  the  beginning  of  June  on 
Blackheath.  On  the  advance  of  the  King  with  an  equal 
force,  however,  they  determined  to  lay  their  complaint  be- 
fore the  royal  Council  and  withdraAv  to  their  homes.  The 
"Complaint  of  the  Commons  of  Kent,"  is  of  high  value  in 
the  light  which  it  throws  on  the  condition  of  the  people. 
Not  one  of  the  demands  touches  on  religious  reform.  The 
question  of  villeinage  and  serfage  finds  no  place  in  it.  In 
the  seventy  years  which  had  intervened  since  the  last  peas- 
ant rising,  villeinage  had  died  naturally  away  before  the 
progress  of  social  change.  The  Statutes  of  Apparel,  which 
from  this  time  encumber  the  Statute-book,  show  in  their 
anxiety  to  curtail  the  dress  of  the  laborer  and  the  farmer 
the  progress  of  these  classes  in  comfort  and  wealth ;  and 
from  the  language  of  the  statutes  themselves  it  is  plain 
that  as  wages  rose  both  farmer  and  laborer  went  on  cloth- 
ing themselves  better  in  spite  of  sumptuary  provisions. 
"With  the  exception  of  a  demand  for  the  repeal  of  the  Stat- 
ute of  Laborers,  the  programme  of  the  Commons  was  not 
social  but  political.  The  "  Complaint"  calls  for  adminis- 
trative and  economical  reforms ;  it  denounces  the  exclusion 
of  the  Duke  of  York  and  other  nobles  from  the  royal  coun- 


568  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [BOOK  IV. 

cils;  it  calls  for  a  change  of  ministry,  a  more  careful  ex- 
penditure of  the  royal  revenue,  and  for  the  restoration  of 
freedom  of  election  which  had  been  broken  in  upon  by 
the  interference  both  of  the  Crown  and  the  great  land- 
owners. 

The  Council  refused  to  receive  the  "Complaint,"  and  a 
body  of  troops  under  Sir  Humphrey  Stafford  fell  on  the 
Kentishmen  as  they  reached  Sevenoaks.  This  attack,  how- 
ever, was  roughly  beaten  off,  and  Cade's  host  turned  back 
to  encounter  the  royal  army.  But  the  royal  army  itself 
was  already  calling  for  justice  on  the  traitors  who  misled 
the  King ;  and  at  the  approach  of  the  Kentishmen  it  broke 
up  in  disorder.  Its  dispersion  was  followed  by  Henry's 
flight  to  Kenilworth  and  the  entry  of  the  Kentishmen  into 
London,  where  the  execution  of  Lord  Say,  the  most  un- 
popular of  the  royal  ministers,  broke  the  obstinacy  of  his 
colleagues.  For  three  days  the  peasants  entered  the  city 
freely,  retiring  at  nightfall  to  their  camp  across  the  river : 
but  on  the  fifth  of  July  the  men  of  London,  goaded  by  the 
outrages  of  the  rabble  whom  their  presence  roused  to  plun- 
der, closed  the  bridge  against  them,  and  beat  back  an  at- 
tack with  great  slaughter.  The  Kentishmen  still,  however, 
lay  unbroken  in  Southwark,  while  Bishop  Waynflete  con- 
ferred with  Cade  on  behalf  of  the  Council.  Their  "  Com- 
plaint" was  received,  pardons  were  granted  to  all  who  had 
joined  in  the  rising,  and  the  insurgents  dispersed  quietly 
to  their  homes.  Cade  had  striven  in  vain  to  retain  them 
in  arms;  on  their  dispersion  he  formed  a  new  force  by 
throwing  open  the  jails,  and  carried  off  the  booty  he  had 
Won  to  Rochester.  Here,  however,  his  men  quarrelled  over 
the  plunder;  his  force  broke  up,  and  Cade  himself  was 
slain  by  Iden,  the  Sheriff  of  Kent,  as  he  fled  into  Sussex. 

Kent  remained  restless  through  the  year,  and  a  rising 
in  Wiltshire  showed  the  growing  and  widespread  trouble 
of  the  time.  The  "  Complaint"  indeed  had  only  been  re- 
ceived to  be  laid  aside.  No  attempt  was  made  to  redress 
the  grievances  which  it  stated  or  to  reform  the  govern- 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  569 

ment.  On  the  contrar}'-  the  main  object  of  popular  hate, 
the  Duke  of  Somerset,  was  at  once  recalled  from  Nor- 
mandy to  take  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  royal  Council. 
York  on  the  other  hand,  whose  recall  had  been  pressed  in 
the  "Complaint,"  was  looked  upon  as  an  open  foe. 
"Strange  language"  indeed  had  long  before  the  Kentish 
rising  been  uttered  about  the  Duke.  Men  had  threatened 
that  he  "should  be  fetched  with  many  thousands,"  and 
the  expectation  of  his  coming  to  reform  the  government 
became  so  general  that  orders  were  given  to  close  the 
western  ports  against  his  landing.  If  we  believe  the  Duke 
himself,  he  was  forced  to  move  at  last  by  efforts  to  indict 
him  as  a  traitor  in  Ireland  itself.  Crossing  at  Michael- 
mas to  Wales  in  spite  of  the  efforts  to  arrest  him,  he  gath- 
ered four  thousand  men  on  his  estates  and  marched  upon 
London.  No  serious  effort  was  made  to  prevent  his  ap- 
proach to  the  King ;  and  Henry  found  himself  helpless  to 
resist  his  demand  of  a  Parliament  and  of  the  admission  of 
new  councillors  to  the  royal  council-board.  Parliament 
met  in  November,  and  a  bitter  strife  between  York  and 
Somerset  ended  in  the  arrest  of  the  latter.  A  demand 
which  at  once  followed  shows  the  importance  of  his  fall. 
Henry  the  Sixth  still  remained  childless ;  and  Young,  a 
member  for  Bristol,  proposed  in  the  Commons  that  the 
Duke  of  York  should  be  declared  heir  to  the  throne.  But 
the  blow  was  averted  by  repeated  prorogations,  and 
Henry's  sympathies  were  shown  by  the  committal  of 
Young  to  the  Tower,  by  the  release  of  Somerset,  and  by 
his  promotion  to  the  captaincy  of  Calais,  the  most  impor- 
tant military  post  under  the  Crown.  The  Commons  in- 
deed still  remained  resolute.  When  they  again  met  in 
the  summer  of  1451  they  called  for  the  removal  of  Somer- 
set and  his  creatures  from  the  King's  presence.  But 
Henry  evaded  the  demand;  and  the  dissolution  of  the 
Houses  announced  the  royal  resolve  to  govern  in  defiance 
of  the  national  will. 

The  contest  between  the  Houses  and  the  Crown  had 


570  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

cost  England  her  last  possessions  across  the  Channel.  As 
York  marched  upon  London  Charles  closed  on  the  frag- 
ment of  the  duchy  of  Guienne  which  still  remained  to  the 
descendants  of  Eleanor.  In  a  few  months  all  was  won. 
Bourg  and  Blaye  surrendered  in  the  spring  of  1451,  Bor- 
deaux in  the  summer;  two  months  later  the  loss  of 
Bciyonne  ended  the  war  in  the  south.  Of  all  the  English 
possessions  in  France  only  Calais  remained;  and  in  1453 
Calais  was  threatened  with  attack.  The  news  of  this 
crowning  danger  again  called  York  to  the  front.  On  the 
declaration  of  Henry's  will  to  resist  all  change  in  the 
government  the  Duke  had  retired  to  his  castle  of  Ludlow, 
arresting  the  whispers  of  his  enemies  with  a  solemn  pro- 
test that  he  was  true  liegeman  to  the  King.  But  after- 
events  show  that  he  was  planning  a  more  decisive  course 
of  action  than  that  which  had  broken  down  with  the  dis- 
solution of  the  Parliament,  and  the  news  of  the  approach- 
ing siege  gave  ground  for  taking  such  a  course  at  once. 
Somerset  had  been  appointed  Captain  of  Calais,  and  as  his 
incapacity  had  lost  England  Normanrly,  it  would  cost  her 
— so  England  believed — her  last  fortress  in  France.  It 
was  said  indeed  that  the  Duke  was  negotiating  with  Bur- 
gundy for  its  surrender.  In  the  spring  of  1452  therefore 
York  again  marched  on  London,  but  this  time  with  a 
large  body  of  ordnance  and  an  army  which  the  arrival  of 
reinforcements  under  Lord  Cobham  and  the  Earl  of  Devon- 
shire raised  to  over  twenty  thousand  men.  Eluding  the 
host  which  gathered  round  the  King  and  Somerset  he 
passed  by  the  capital,  whose  gates  had  been  closed  by 
Henry's  orders,  and  entering  Kent  took  post  at  Dartford. 
His  army  was  soon  fronted  by  the  superior  force  of  the 
King,  but  the  interposition  of  the  more  moderate  lords  of 
the  Council  averted  open  conflict.  Henry  promised  that 
Somerset  should  be  pvit  on  his  trial  on  the  charges  ad- 
vanced by  the  Duke,  and  York  on  this  pledge  disbanded 
his  men.  But  the  pledge  was  at  once  broken.  Somerset 
remained  in  power.     York  found  himself  practically  a 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     130:— 1461.  571 

prisoner,  and  only  won  his  release  by  an  oath  to  refrain 
from  further  "  routs"  or  assemblies. 

Two  such  decisive  failures  seem  for  the  time  to  have 
utterly  broken  Richard's  power.  Weakened  as  the  crown 
had  been  by  losses  abroad,  it  was  clearl}-  strong  enough 
as  yet  to  hold  its  own  against  the  chief  of  the  baronage 
A  general  amnesty  indeed  sheltered  York's  adherents  and 
enabled  the  Duke  himself  to  retire  safely  to  Ludlow,  but 
for  more  than  a  year  his  rival  Somerset  wielded  without 
opposition  the  power  Richard  had  striven  to  wrest  from 
him.  A  favorable  turn  in  the  progress  of  the  war  gave 
fresh  vigor  to  the  Government.  The  French  forces  were 
abruptly  called  from  tlieir  march  against  Calais  to  the 
recovery  of  the  south.  The  towns  of  Guienne  had  opened 
their  gates  to  Charles  on  his  pledge  to  respect  their  fran- 
chises, but  the  need  of  the  French  treasury  was  too  great 
to  respect  the  royal  word,  and  heavy  taxation  turned  the 
hopes  of  Gascony  to  its  old  masters.  On  the  landing  of 
an  English  force  under  Talbot,  Earl  of  Shrewsburj^  a 
general  revolt  restored  to  the  English  their  possessions  on 
the  Garonne.  Somerset  used  this  break  of  better  fortune 
to  obtain  heavy  subsidies  from  Parliament  in  1453 ;  but 
ere  the  twenty  thousand  men  whose  levy  was  voted  could 
cross  the  Channel  a  terrible  blow  had  again  ruined  the 
English  cause.  In  a  march  to  relieve  Castillon  on  the 
Dordogne  Shrewsbury  suddenly  found  himself  face  to  face 
with  the  whole  French  army.  His  men  were  mown  down 
by  its  guns,  and  the  Earl  himself  left  dead  on  the  field. 
His  fall  was  the  signal  for  a  general  submission.  Town 
after  town  again  threw  open  its  gates  to  Charles,  and 
Bordeaux  capitulated  in  October. 

The  final  loss  of  Gascony  fell  upon  England  at  a  mo- 
ment when  two  events  at  home  changed  the  whole  face  of 
affairs.  After  eight  years  of  childlessness  the  King  be- 
came in  October  the  father  of  a  son.  With  the  birth  of 
this  boy  the  rivalry  of  York  and  the  Beauforts  for  the 
right  of  succession  ceased  to  be  the  mainspring  of  English 


573  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 


politics ;  and  the  crown  seemed  again  to  rise  out  of  the 
turmoil  of  warring  factions.  But  with  the  birth  of  the 
son  came  the  madness  of  the  father.  Henry  the  Sixth 
sank  into  a  state  of  idiocy  which  made  his  rule  impossi- 
ble, and  his  ministers  were  forced  to  call  a  great  Council 
of  peers  to  devise  means  for  the  government  of  the  realm. 
(York  took  his  seat  at  this  council,  and  the  mood  of  the 
nobles  was  seen  in  the  charges  of  misgovernment  which 
were  at  once  made  against  Somerset,  and  in  his  commit- 
tal to  the  Tower.  But  Somerset  was  no  longer  at  the  head 
of  the  royal  party.  With  the  birth  of  her  son  the  Queen, 
Margaret  of  Anjou,  came  to  the  front.  Her  restless  des- 
potic temper  was  quickened  to  action  by  the  dangers 
which  she  saw  threatening  her  boy's  heritage  of  the 
crown ;  and  the  demand  to  be  invested  with  the  full  royal 
power  which  she  made,  after  a  vain  effort  to  rouse  her 
husband  from  his  lethargy,  aimed  directly  at  the  exclusion 
of  the  Duke  of  York.  The  demand  however  was  roughly 
set  aside ;  the  Lords  gave  permission  to  York  to  summon 
a  Parliament  as  the  King's  lieutenant;  and  on  the  assem- 
bly of  the  Houses  in  the  spring  of  1454,  as  the  mental 
alienation  of  the  King  continued,  the  Lords  chose  Richard 
Protector  of  the  Realm.  With  Somerset  in  prison  little 
opposition  could  be  made  to  the  Protectorate,  and  that  lit- 
tle was  soon  put  down.  But  the  nation  had  hardly  time 
to  feel  the  guidance  of  Richard's  steady  hand  when  it 
was  removed.  At  the  opening  of  1455  the  King  recovered 
his  senses,  and  York's  Protectorate  came  at  once  to  an  end. 
Henry  had  no  sooner  grasped  power  again  than  he  fell 
back  on  his  old  policy.  The  Queen  became  his  chief  ad- 
viser. The  Duke  of  Somerset  was  released  from  the  Tower 
and  owned  by  Henry  in  formal  court  as  his  true  and 
faithful  liegeman.  York  on  the  other  hand  was  deprived 
of  the  government  of  Calais,  and  summoned  with  his 
friends  to  a  council  at  Leicester,  whose  object  was  to  pro- 
vide for  the  surety  of  the  King's  person.  Prominent 
among  these  friends  were  two   Earls  of  the  house  of 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.    1307—1461.  573 

Neville.  We  have  seen  how  great  a  part  the  Nevilles 
played  after  the  accession  of  the  house  of  Lancaster;  it 
was  mainly  to  their  efforts  that  Henry  the  Fourth  owed 
the  overthrow  of  the  Percies,  their  rivals  in  the  mastery 
of  the  north;  and  from  that  moment  their  wealth  and 
power  had  been  steadily  growing.  Richard  Neville,  Earl 
of  Salisbury,  was  one  of  the  mightiest  barons  of  the  realm ; 
but  his  power  was  all  but  equalled  by  that  of  his  son,  a 
second  Richard,  who  had  won  the  Earldom  of  Warwick 
by  his  marriage  with  the  heiress  of  the  Beauchamps.  The 
marriage  of  York  to  Salisbury's  sister,  Cecily  Neville,  had 
bound  both  the  earls  to  his  cause,  and  under  his  Protec- 
torate Salisbury  had  been  created  Chancellor.  But  he  was 
stripped  of  this  office  on  the  Duke's  fall ;  and  their  sum- 
mons to  the  council  of  Leicester  was  held  by  the  Nevilles 
to  threaten  ruin  to  themselves  as  to  York.  The  three 
nobles  at  once  took  arms  to  secure,  as  they  alleged,  safe 
access  to  the  King's  person.  Henry  at  the  news  of  their 
approach  mustered  two  thousand  men,  and  with  Somerset, 
the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  and  other  nobles  in  his  train, 
advanced  to  St.  Albans. 

On  the  23d  of  May  York  and  the  two  Earls  encamped 
without  the  town,  and  called  on  Henry  "  to  deliver  such 
as  we  will  accuse,  and  they  to  have  like  as  they  have  de- 
served and  done."  The  King's  reply  was  as  bold  as  the 
demand.  "Rather  than  they  shall  have  any  lord  here 
with  me  at  this  time,"  he  replied,  "I  shall  this  day  for 
their  sake  and  in  this  quarrel  myself  live  and  die. "  A 
summons  to  disperse  as  traitors  left  York  and  his  fellow 
nobles  no  help  but  in  an  attack.  At  eventide  three  as- 
saults were  made  on  the  town.  Warwick  was  the  first  to 
break  in,  and  the  sound  of  his  trumpets  in  the  streets 
turned  the  fight  into  a  rout.  Death  had  answered  the 
prayer  which  Henry  rejected,  for  the  Duke  of  Somerset 
with  Lord  Clifford  and  the  Earl  of  Northumberland  were 
among  the  fallen.  The  King  himself  fell  into  the  victors' 
hands.     The  three  lords  kneeling  before  him  prayed  him 


574  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 

to  take  them  for  his  true  liegemen,  and  then  rode  by  his 
side  in  triumph  into  London,  where  a  parliament  was  at 
once  summoned  which  confirmed  the  acts  of  the  Duke; 
and  on  a  return  of  the  King's  malady  again  nominated 
York  as  Protector.  But  in  the  spring  of  1456  Henry's 
recovery  again  ended  the  Duke's  rule;  and  for  two  years 
the  warring  parties  sullenly  watched  one  another.  A  tem- 
porary reconciliation  between  them  was  brought  about  by 
the  misery  of  the  realm,  but  an  attempt  of  the  Queen  to 
arrest  the  Nevilles  in  1458  caused  a  fresh  outbreak  of  war. 
Salisbury  defeated  Lord  Audley  in  a  fight  at  Bloreheath 
in  Stajffordshire,  and  York  with  the  two  Earls  raised  his 
standard  at  Ludlow.  But  the  crown  was  still  stronger 
than  any  force  of  the  baronage.  The  King  marched  rap- 
idly on  the  insurgents,  and  a  decisive  battle  was  only 
averted  by  the  desertion  of  a  part  of  the  Yorkist  army  and 
the  disbanding  of  the  rest.  The  Duke  himself  fled  to 
Ireland,  the  Earls  to  Calais,  while  the  Queen,  summoning 
a  Parliament  at  Coventry  in  November,  pressed  on  their 
attainder.  But  the  check,  whatever  its  cause,  had  been 
merely  a  temporary  one.  York  and  Warwick  planned  a 
fresh  attempt  from  their  secure  retreats  in  Ireland  and 
Calais ;  and  in  the  midsummer  of  1460  the  Earls  of  Salis- 
bury and  Warwick,  with  Richard's  son  Edward,  the 
young  Earl  of  March,  again  landed  in  Kent.  Backed  by 
a  general  rising  of  the  county  they  entered  London  amid 
the  acclamations  of  its  citizens.  The  royal  army  was  de- 
feated in  a  hard-fought  action  at  Northampton  in  July. 
Margaret  fled  to  Scotland,  and  Henry  was  left  a  prisoner 
in  the  hands  of  the  Duke  of  York. 

The  position  of  York  as  heir  presumptive  to  the  crown 
by  his  descent  from  Edmund  of  Langley  had  ceased  with 
the  birth  of  a  son  to  Henry  the  Sixth :  but  the  victory  of 
Northampton  no  sooner  raised  him  to  the  supreme  control 
of  affairs  than  he  ventured  to  assert  the  far  more  danger- 
ous claims  which  he  had  secretly  cherished  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  Lionel  of  Clarer^ce,  and  to  their  consciousness 


Chap.  €.]  THE  PARLIAI^IENT.     1307—1461.  575 

of  which  was  owing  the  hostility  of  Henry  and  his  Queen. 
Such  a  claim  was  in  direct  opposition  to  that  power  of  the 
two  Houses  whose  growth  had  been  the  work  of  the  past 
hundred  years.  There  was  no  constitutional  ground  for 
any  limitation  of  the  right  of  Parliament  to  set  aside  an 
elder  branch  in  favor  of  a  younger,  and  in  the  Parlia- 
mentary Act  which  placed  the  House  of  Lancaster  on  the 
throne  the  claim  of  the  House  of  Mortimer  had  been  de- 
liberately set  aside.  Possession,  too,  told  against  the 
Yorkist  pretensions.  To  modern  minds  the  best  reply  to 
Richard's  claim  lay  in  the  words  used  at  a  later  time  by 
Henry  himself.  "My  father  was  King;  his  father  also 
was  King ;  I  myself  have  worn  the  crown  forty  years  from 
my  cradle :  you  have  all  sworn  fealty  to  me  as  your  sover- 
eign, and  your  fathers  have  done  the  like  to  mine.  How 
then  can  my  right  be  disputed?"  Long  and  undisturbed 
possession  as  well  as  a  distinctly  legal  title  by  free  vote  of 
Parliament  was  in  favor  of  the  House  of  Lancaster.  But 
the  persecution  of  the  Lollards,  the  interference  with  elec- 
tions, the  odium  of  the  war,  the  shame  of  the  long  mis- 
government,  told  fatally  against  the  weak  and  imbecile 
King  whose  reign  had  been  a  long  battle  of  contending 
factions.  That  the  misrule  had  been  serious  was  shown 
by  the  attitude  of  the  commercial  class.  It  was  the  rising 
of  Kent,  the  great  manufacturing  district  of  the  realm, 
which  brought  about  the  victory  of  Northampton. 
Throughout  the  struggle  which  followed  London  and  the 
great  merchant  towns  were  steady  for  the  House  of  York. 
Zeal  for  the  Lancastrian  cause  was  found  only  in  Wales, 
in  northern  Eiighuul,  and  in  the  southwestern  shires,  it, 
is  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  shrewd  traders  of  Cheapside 
were  moved  by  an  abstract  question  of  hereditary  right, 
or  that  the  wild  Welshmen  believed  themselves  to  be  sup- 
porting the  rightof  Parliament  to  regulate  the  succession. 
But  it  marks  the  ])ower  which  Parliament  had  gained 
that,  directly  as  his  claims  ran  in  the  teeth  of  a  succession 
established  by  it,  the  Duke  of  York  felt  himself  compelled 


676  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.     [Book  IV. 

to  convene  the  two  Houses  in  October  and  to  lay  his  claim 
before  the  Lords  as  a  petition  of  right.  Neither  oaths 
nor  the  numerous  Acts  which  had  settled  and  confirmed 
the  right  to  the  crown  in  the  House  of  Lancaster  could 
destroy,  he  pleaded,  his  hereditary  claim.  The  bulk  of 
the  Lords  refrained  from  attendance,  and  those  who  were 
present  received  the  petition  with  hardly  concealed  reluc- 
tance. They  solved  the  question,  as  they  hoped,  by  a 
compromise.  They  refused  to  dethrone  the  King,  but  they 
had  sworn  no  fealty  to  his  child,  and  at  Henry's  death 
thej'  agreed  to  receive  the  Duke  as  successor  to  the  crown. 
But  the  open  display  of  York's  pretensions  at  once 
united  the  partisans  of  the  royal  House  in  a  vigorous  re- 
sistance; and  the  deadly  struggle  which  received  the 
name  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  from  the  white  rose  which 
formed  the  badge  of  the  House  of  York  and  the  red  rose 
which  was  the  cognizance  of  the  House  of  Lancaster  began 
in  a  gathering  of  the  North  round  Lord  Clifford  and  of 
the  West  round  Henry,  Duke  of  Somerset,  the  son  of  the 
Duke  who  had  fallen  at  St.  Albans.  York,  who  hurried 
in  December  to  meet  the  first  with  a  far  inferior  force, 
was  defeated  and  slain  at  Wakefield.  The  passion  of 
civil  war  broke  fiercely  out  on  the  field.  The  Earl  of  Sal- 
isbury who  had  been  taken  prisoner  was  hurried  to  the 
block.  The  head  of  Duke  Richard,  crowned  in  mockery 
with  a  diadem  of  paper,'  is  said  to  have  been  impaled  on 
the  walls  of  York.  His  second  son.  Lord  Rutland,  fell 
crj'ing  for  mercy  on  his  knees  before  Clifford.  But  Clif- 
ford's father  had  been  the  first  to  fall  in  the  battle  of  St. 
Albans  which  opened  the  struggle.  "As  your  father 
killed  mine,"  cried  the  savage  Baron,  while  he  plunged 
his  dagger  in  the  young  noble's  breast,  "  I  will  kill  j^ou !" 
The  brutal  deed  was  soon  to  be  avenged.  Richard's  eldest 
son,  Edward,  the  Earl  of  March,  was  busy  gathering  a 
force  on  the  Welsh  border  in  support  of  his  father  at  the 
moment  when  the  Duke  was  defeated  and  slain.  Young 
as  he  was  Edward  showed  in  this  hour  of  apparent  ruin 


Chap.  6.]  THE  PARLIAMENT.     1307—1461.  577 

the  quickness  and  vigor  of  his  temper,  and  routing  on  his 
march  a  body  of  Lancastrians  at  Mortimer's  Cross  struck 
boldly  upon  London.  It  was  on  London  that  the  Lancas- 
trian army  had  moved  after  its  victory  at  Wakefield.  A 
desperate  struggle  took  place  at  St.  Albans,  where  a  force 
of  Kentish  men  with  the  Earl  of  Warwick  strove  to  bar 
its  march  on  the  capital,  but  Warwick's  force  broke  under 
cover  of  night  and  an  immediate  advance  of  the  con- 
querors might  have  decided  the  contest.  Margaret,  how- 
ever, paused  to  sully  her  victory  by  a  series  of  bloody  exe- 
cutions, and  the  rough  northerners  who  formed  the  bulk 
of  her  army  scattered  to  pillage  while  Edward,  hurrying 
from  the  west,  appeared  before  the  capital.  The  citizens 
rallied  at  his  call,  and  cries  of  "  Long  live  King  Edward" 
rang  round  the  handsome  young  leader  as  he  rode  through 
the  streets.  A  council  of  Yorkist  lords,  hastily  summoned, 
resolved  that  the  compromise  agreed  on  in  Parliament  was 
at  an  end  and  that  Henry  of  Lancaster  had  forfeited  the 
throne.  The  final  issue,  however,  now  lay  not  with  Par- 
liament, but  with  the  sword.  Disappointed  of  London,  the 
Lancastrian  army  fell  rapidly  back  on  the  North,  and  Ed- 
ward hurried  as  rapidly  in  pursuit.  On  the  29th  of  March, 
1461,  the  two  armies  encountered  one  another  at  Towton 
Field,  near  Tadcaster.  in  the  numoers  engaged,  as  well 
as  in  the  terrible  obstinacy  of  the  struggle,  no  such  battle 
had  been  seen  in  England  since  the  fight  of  Senlac.  The 
two  armies  together  numbered  nearly  120,000  men.  The 
day  had  just  broken  when  the  Yorkists  advanced  through 
a  thick  snowfall,  and  for  six  hours  the  battle  raged  with 
desperate  bravery  on  either  side.  At  one  critical  moment 
Warwick  saw  his  men  falter,  and  stabbing  his  horse  be- 
fore them,  swore  on  the  cross  of  his  sword  to  win  or  die 
on  the  field.  The  battle  was  turned  at  last  by  the  arrival 
of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  with  a  fresh  force  from  the  Eastern 
Counties,  and  at  noon  the  Lancastrians  gave  way.  A 
river  in  their  rear  turned  the  retreat  into  a  rout,  and  the 
flight  and  carnage,  for  no  quarter  was  given  on  either 
Vol.  I.— 37 


578  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.      [Book  IV. 


side,  went  on  through  the  night  and  the  morrow,  Ed- 
Avurd's  herald  counted  more  than  20,000  Lancastrian 
corpses  on  the  field.  The  losses  of  the  conquerors  were 
hardly  less  heavy  than  those  of  the  conquered.  But  their 
triumph  was  complete.  The  Earl  of  Northumberland 
Avas  slain  ;  the  Earls  of  Devonshire  and  Wiltshire  were 
taken  and  beheaded  ;  the  Duke  of  Somerset  fled  into  exile. 
Henry  himself  with  his  Queen  was  forced  to  fly  over  the 
border  and  to  find  a  refuge  in  Scotland.  The  cause  of  the 
House  of  Lancaster  was  lost;  and  with  the  victory  of 
Towton  the  crown  of  England  passed  to  Edward  of  York. 


END  OF  VOL.  I. 


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